FLOODING Pt-7 (Done)

 FLOODING Pt-7 (Done)

Finally done and all moved in! Ok, were moved in but still lts of work to do outside. The flood waters scowled a lot of earth away from blocks and pretty much around the house. That's alsp what caused our pool to collapse two months after the flooding.

So why did we movie back here after getting flooded? Well... there is that money thing again. I'd gladly move if I had a nice place where I didn't have to make a house payment each month or pay rent. When we first bought this place our payment was like $89.00 a month! After many years of living here and bowering money to fix it up, when we paid it off, or payments were just over $600 a month! But it's all paid off now and I really didn't feel like going in debt for another place. The only thing that saved our butts was losing the Jeep in the flood. If irt wasn't for losing the Jeep we would have been up the creek without a paddle.

We did look at a few other homes after we got the money for the Jeep but even putting $20,000 down on a place would mean we would still have a big payment to make every month, something we didn't want to do and besides that, we would probably both be dead before getting it paid off.... well I know I would be.

Besides the money thing, the house does have a lot of bad sides to it like being close to a creek, sloping and leaning floors, ceilings, and walls, but we like were the house is located, no neighbors breathing down your neck. Or closest neighbor is either the ones way over across the road or the ones out or lane. There close, but not super close.

Another thing we really like about this house is the way it's laid out. The kitchen is the main focus area. When you come in the door from outside, you enter the kitchen. Sorry for the people who have a house where when you enter you enter into a carpeted living room and people dragging all kinds of dirt, snow, mud etc., onto your carpet. Doesn't matter here, just sweep or mop it up being it's a hard floor not carpet, though there is door mat outside and a rug inside the door to wipe access crap off your shoes. But some people prefer people entering there home into the living room. We all can't be the same.

Anyways.... the point I was making is that the kitchen is the main focus area of the house. You come in the door, your in the kitchen, I leave the computer room I take about 2 steps through the small hall and I'm in the kitchen, same as for the bathroom, take about 2 steps through the same hall and your in the kitchen. Coming out of the bedroom you might take 4-6 steps past the laundry room and your in the kitchen. Come out of the living room and your in the kitchen. And of course the kitchen and dining room are like connected to where as you walk from the kitchen, it then opens up into the dining room.

The point is, everyone spends time going to the kitchen to do whatever, get food, a snack, a drink, wash your hands, etc., etc. The temp house we lived at we both hated it's layout. Going for groceries.... here you just walk in the door, put your groceries on the counter then put them away. At the temp house you enter the door and had to carry them the whole length of the house to get to the kitchen which was very, very small.

Doing laundry at the other house was also a nightmare! Ok, so lets say you decide to do the laundry. You have to go upstairs to get the laundry which was also in a small bathroom, then you had to come down stairs again, but then had to go down more steps to the basement were the washer and dryer were. Can you imagine how many times in even a normal day you had to go up and down steps? A lot! I won't miss having steps! Every time you wanted something you eith had to go up stairs or down to the basement. Getting to old for steps anyways.

So anyways were all done and moved back in. Below are some pictures of how the house looks like now in the inside.

In the end what all did we have to pitch because of irt being ruined in the flood? A lot, like three dumpsters full of stuff. Most of everything that was down low had to be pitched, including most everything that was made of wood which swelled and split or made of particle board that kind of just fell apart.

Everything in the bathroom went but for a stand and a hamper I made. Everything else went including the tub/shower unit, toilet, vanity/sink, etc. In the kitchen again everything went but the dishwasher which still works. Dining room half or more of the stuff went, same as in the living room. The bed room everything went.

What did we save? Pretty much everything that was a foot or more off the floor and or on the walls. The dishwasher still woks after letting it dry out. The frig still works, the furnace still works as well as the gas heater in the living room. The hot water heater still works after I replaced both thermostats and heating elements. The clothers dry still works, but we did lose the washer. The washer still "kind of worked", it ran and everything but it was like it didn't know what it was doing. Guess the electronics got messed up on it, so we bought a new washer.

DONE!!! Finished pictures below.

DONE..........

FLOODING Pt-6

 FLOODING Pt-6

Putting more things back together. I'm sure as I write all this I'm missing or forgetting about things, but you'll get the general idea. Same as with the pictures, I'm pretty sure there are pictures I wich I would have used then the ones I did, or used more pictures. Some of the pictures that go along with this post might seem a little "warped" or look kind of "fish-eye", that's because I was using a real wide angle lens. Then a few might look "foggy" which is because of coming out of the cold into a warmer area and the lens fogging up a bit, and or because the sun was starting to shine through the window.

After ripping everything out then trying to piece things back together isn't always that easy. Being pretty much everything is crooked and when trying to put things back as they were I ran into a few problems like, "why did I do it like that", and or, "how did I do that"? We built on this house like 35 years ago and trying to remember how and why I did things a certain way I couldn't remember so I had to end up doing things differently.

Of course a lot of things get done the way they got done (and still do) because it comes down to the money thing. When we started we started with the bathroom. We had cold water all the time execpt for when I had to turn it off to connect the water supply lines. We didn't have hot water until we got the kitchen sink installed. We were more concerned at getting the place liviable within 6 months being that was the time we had at the temp house, so the water heater just layed on its side in the basement until we got the kitchen sink ready for use.

Originally when we first started remolding 35 years back, the sink was on thew opposite wall where the stove sits now. When I ripped up the flooring where the sink used to sit, there was a pretty big hole in the floor where the sink must have leaked for years to make a hole that big! At that time when we moved the sink I ended up leaving the hole there and covered it with hardboard then the flooring. It was why waste the time and money when no one will ever see it and a basr cabinet will be setting there.

This time I cut the "rot" out which made a square hole about 12"x12" and I had to go in the basement and put two short pieces of 2x4's under the floor so I had something to nail the end of the boards to, then put down new boards where I took the rotten boards out. This time though insted of using hardboard I went with 1/4" plywood.

So as far as getting things ready enough for us to move back in, the rooms got done in this order, bathroom, kitchen, dining room, bedroom, two small halls, laundry room, then living room.

Below are some of the pictures a little before we got ready to move back in.

TO BE CONTINUED......

FLOODING Pt-5

 FLOODING Pt-5

When was the last time you bought lumber, etc., at Lowes? Did you notice that a lot of it was crap? Ok, so now we got everything ripped out of the house that needed to be and it's time to start putting things back together. Talking about Lowes "crap" lumber, well you can't really put all the blame on Lowes, there just selling it, most of the fault should fall on the manufacture who makes it.

So replacing the sink base we bought the wooden sink base they had in stock. We looked at what they had and all were banged up, broken, etc., but one, which is the one we bought. When we got it home and took off the cardboard that heled the drawers and doors shut and sat it where it was going to go, something was really wrong. Turns out the unit wasn't "square" and the one end of one drawer when closed still had about a 3/4" to 1" gap on the one end of it. There was no way to make any adjustments because the whole sink base wasn't square, so we had to take it back.

When we got back to Lowes with the defective sink base it turns out all were bad in one way or another. If I'm paying good money for something even if it is lower end stuff, I still want what I'm paying for. We did get kind of lucky being there was one sink base we diden't see way up on the very top shelf sitting. We got them to take it down and even before they got it down I seen a problem with it, it was missing the toe kick board. Shit! But the good news they said they would take $90.00 of the price. Ok, I can live with that and make my own toe kick board, which I did.

Then there are the doors which I hate installing and I had to replace 7 of them, prehung doors. The bad thing about installing doors here is the everything for the door openings are crooked and or lean. I know, just make the door straight in the opening, well, it's not that easy. First you can't life up the one end to make it straight because there isn't enough room to lift it, one or two doors I had to cut off the bootom of the jamb so it would fit in the door opening. Then the leaning walls... how bad was the orst wall? Well, from the top of the door to the bottom, with the door straight, there is a 1" difference between the top and bottom of the door. But in the end we got eveything together so it looks at least half decent.

The one door we bought at Lowes and was trying to get it installed I had a hell of a problem, nothing was working. I'd try this or that, and no matter what I tried, something was wrong. The one way the door did work right but I forget what was wrong doing it that way. The other way the way I wanted it, the top of the door frame kept hitting or rubbing the door, just couldn't get things straight. Turns out the top of the door frame was bowed causing the door to rub or hit the door frame. I could have pulled it up when driving nails in it, but remember I had no room, the door was tight in its opening. So we took that door back and got another one which went in correctly and worked fine.

Then there is the molding.... what the hell is wrong with all of there molding? You put stain on it and it looks like a lepard, all spotty and not very nice looking. So we ended up using both wood molding and that fake shit molding. They really don't have a good selection of the fake stuff and some of the stuff we needed they didn't have and had to use something else. We would have rather went with wood, but after seeing the molding getting all spotty we decided not to.

Then there was the ceiling in the dining room which was tile what I put up many years ago and looked good, but after 35 years it wasn't looking to good any more plus we had a leak that made a water make in two place so we had the roof replaced about three years ago and since we were redoing things we figured we my as well replace the ceiling tile with new tile.

We bought enough ceiling tile we needed but guess what, Lowes don't even sell "ceil-tile" staples, made for putting up ceiling tile. We did find some at another store though. Putting up the ceiling tile was a nightmare!!! What the hell is going on? I couldn't remember how I put the old tile up being it was so many years ago, but I did the measuring, made the chalk lines etc., but every time I started putting up the tile things would seem to go crooked. I think part of the problem was the walls ain't square and they run out from each other making it hard to know just how to put up the first tile. After putting tiles up twice and things going wrong, we switch plans and abandoned the tiles and took back what we didn't open. which was all but for one box.

What we ended up using was tongue and groove planks. Not the thick 3/4" stuff, but the stuff that's 1/4" think and 8-foot long. Probably the hardest part was staining it after putting it up, you get tired looking up doing a 12x17 foot room and putting two coats on it. In the end we got the new ceiling up and it looks pretty good!

The first work we did was on the bathroom being it would be the hardest and most expensive room to do. The toilet I had to cut a 2x12 in an angle through it's width, that's through the 2" side of the board going from 1.5" down to about 3/4". That was a lot of fun but we finally got it. The reason for that was so the toilet set level on the floor insted of leaning.

We then put in a new tub and shower surround. If you notice the faucets, I don't think that is what is suppose to go on these types of shower surrounds, but rather the kind that you take the handle and turn it all the way on and try adjusting it between the cold and hot until you get it set at the tempture you want. We both hate those things so we went with a cold and hot water faucet. Of course that to turned into a nightmare but we finally got it.

The vanity and sink also turned into a nightmare being I couldn't get the tail piece going through the sink to quit leaking under the sink. I think I had it as tight as you could screw the nut on the bottom but it wouldn't quit leaking (seeping). I don't know how many time I took it off and put it back on before I finally got it to stop leaking water.

The bottom and back of the vanity we had to butcher because of the water lines, though you can't see it. Also had to butcher the shelf inside the vanity for the drain line and trap. But it all worked out also. In the one picture you see a big white cabinet on the left side? We had to cut about 6" off the bottom of it because it was to tall to fit in the bathroom! So we ended up buying brand new stuff, bringing it home then butchering it! lol!!

TO BE CONTINUED....

FLOODING Pt-4

 FLOODING Pt-4

So where were we going to get the money to redo the house. This is a house, well kind of. Originally it was nothing more than a two-room summer place, more like a camp then a house. Through the years different people added onto it until it became a house were people actually lived. By the time we bought it, it's been added on here and there and whoever did pretty bad work. I don't think there is a straight wall, floor or ceiling in the place! I'm being serious about that!

The floors sag, the ceiling lean as well as do the walls. One of the biggest mistakes someone made was adding onto the living room. When they added on, the end sunk causing the ends of the floor joist to lift the floor on the opposite end that it sunk and also made the ceiling slope. Even a worse theng thewy did was they took a supporting wall, the wall that sat on the foundation and moved the whole wall back to make the room bigger. By doing this there was no support under the load bearing wall which caused the floor to sag and it also lifted up the ends of the floor joist. So now where the floor joists met from the room they built on, and from the floor that was sagging caused a big hump in the living room.

For the longest time I wondered why that big hump went across the floor after ripping the floor up I found out why. The ends of both floor joints from the sagging floor and the addition were high. In the end I cut the high spots of the floor joists off but I didn't want to take too much off. It helped some but there is still a hump, just smaller.

In the end we ended up building on all four sides of the house to make it bigger and what a freaking mess that was! It's like you can't make anything straight. About the time you got something figured out, it turn out it throws something else off at the other end, so the only thing you can do is to deal with what you have and do the best you can with what you have to work with. Of course now some things I would have done differently.

Ok, now the big question... where was we getting money to fix the place to make it liviable again? We kind of rebuilt this place once and I really didn't feel like doing it again. The only ones to do the work was my wife and I. So now we needed money!

Bad luck, good luck. If you watch the video in the very first post you seen our truck which is the blue 2010 Nissan Frontier. But we also had a second vehicle, a 2009 Jeep Wrangler. When we got flooded, we moved the Jeep further up on a hill by the house but didn't move it up to far because there was a utility trailer sitting there. Beside that the water wouldn't get that high with only 2-3 inches or rain what they were calling for, not the 8 inches that we got!

Being we stayed all night in the truck on the other side of the road we couldn't see the Jeep and I thought it was ok. Well, it wasn't. The next day when we could return to the house the Jeep got flooded also. Water got inside to half way up on the seat. The first thing I did was check the oil to see if any water was in it, there wasn't. The Jeep started right up and we ended up going to town in it, but the clutch kind of felt funny.

The next day the wife went to go somewhere in the Jeep but when she tried starting it, the Jeep would learch forward. Turns out the clutch wasn't releasing. You could get it to neutral and start the Jeep but you couldn't get it in gear then. I'm pretty sure the slave cylinder got messed up from being under water.

So now our Jeep got flooded and wouldn't work. Of course we didn't have flood insurance and even if we did, I don't think it would cover the Jeep. We did have hme owners insurance so we called them to have it fixed. Turns out they would take the Jeep somewhere and have it cleaned up and repaired.... "if" water didn't get inside the Jeep. If water got inside they would just total it.

Turns out they totaled the Jeep. Didn't really want to lose the Jeep, that was bad news! The good news is that we got more money for it then we paid for it! 

Now we had money to redo the house........

I know everyone is wondering what we got for the 2009 Jeep Wrangler. Well we paid $18,000 for it when we bought it, had it for fives years and it was paid off, but we ended up getting $20,000 for it from the insurance on it. And believe me, it took all of that and more to fix the place back up. Even though the inside is pretty much completed, there is still a lot to do on the outside.

TO BE CONTINUED........

FLOODING Pt-3

 FLOODING Pt-3

Besides having a foot of water in the house and losing the pool, not to mention we didn't have flood insurance! We had flood insurance forever but dropped it for a while and we were in the process of seeing if we could get flood insurance cheaper than what we were paying. The fact is, flood insurance doesn't want to pay anything if you get flooded, if it's not in the house like the first floor, it's a total loss, including anything outside, in sheds, etc.

Here's a sad story.... a couple about a mile or two down the road just bought a house for $100,000! They to get flooded even worse than we did, destroyed everything. They had flood insurance but being they had it less then 30 day's the flood insurance covered nothing! So here they are, just paid out $100,000 for a home that got flooded and they had flood insurance but wasn't covered because they didn't have it for 30 days! Now they have no were to live and they still have to make that house payment. How the hell do you recoup from that?

A lot of people in this area and down the road for miles got hit with flood water, and guess what? The government wouldn't help anyone such as low interest loans to people could rebuild or do repairs that needed to be done. They said there wasn't enough people affected to declare an emergency disaster, really? I know they got a lot of phone calls of people reporting damages from the flood but in the end, no help from the government.

As for us, we got kind of lucky. Right after the flood we had no place to go or stay so we ended up sleeping in a wet, mud-covered house the first night. Then next day though the Red Cross stopped by and gave us a few cleaning materials, something like $500 which we had to pay for three days in a hotel out of whih was still nice to get a shower and a good night's sleep.

After the third night we again had no place to stay so the only thing to do was to come back home and stay here. About that time our daughter got a call from where she works and they put us up for another three nights in another hotel. So for six nights we stayed at a hotel.

After our last night at the motel the only thing left to do was to go back home and do what we could being we didn't have money to be staying at motels, etc. Then we got lucky again! Where my wife works a guy knew another guy that had an apartment and just bought a house which he wanted to rent out. We decided on the house being it was bigger and had a basement, attic, and a garage where we could store most of our stuff that we could save.

Well where my wife worked they got the money together and paid for 6 months rent! That was great!

That gave us time to think about what we wanted to do for sure. We thought about buying another house somewhere else but were getting up there in age to be buying a house. We could rent, but who wants to pay rent every month? In the end, we decided to move back home. Why not? It's paid off, but yes, now it need a lot of work.

What kind of work? All the floors had to be ripped up to the subfloor. All the cabinets had to be ripped out, including the kitchen sink, the bathroom was completely stripped of everything. In all we threw out three dumpsters full of stuff that was ruined.

Ok, were going to move back home..... where are we getting the money to fix things back up and replace things being we had no money and had no flood insurance?

TO BE CONTINUED..............

FLOODING Pt-2

 FLOODING Pt-2

Talking about flooding.... it's been raining now for two days, all day yesterday, last night and all day today. At this point we received 2.75 inches of rain and by this evening will be at 3 inches if not more. It's not really how much rain we get, but rather how fast it falls. I've seen as much as 5 inches fall without us being flooded, but take that 5 inches of rain and have it fall rather quickly, we would get flooded.

As I said before, we live only about 50-60 yards from the creek and on top of that we sit down between a mountain and a ridge, so even when the rain quits, the creek keeps rising until all that rain water runs off the mountain and ridge. Or one neighbor said when they looked out the window it looked like a big wave coming down the creek and it took out there pool. Lucky for us our pool surivied the flood, but.... about two month after the flood we were working on the house and as we were coming down the road we seen all these garbage bags laying in the yard and down by the ditch by the road. My first thought when seeing them was did an animal drag them doen there? The bags were full of aluminum cans.

When we pulled in our lane I then seen why the cans were down in the yard, our swimming pool collapsed and the water that came rusing out of the pool washed the bags down into the yard. So even though the pool surivied the flood, it didn't survive after it. The flood washed out a lot of sand on the one side of the pool which caused the pool to burst open on that side. It littery ripped the pool in half on that side.

So we lost the pool but it's no shame for the pool being it was 25 years old. When we removed the pool, the bottom that hold the sides in place were pretty rusted away, just on the side that burst, the reat was in pretty good shape yet. I'm pretty sure where it rusted out was because it was rightr under the skimmer and any water splashed out of the skimmer would run down the outside of the pool causing that area to rust more then the rest.

Anyways the pool has seen it's day's at 25 years old and it was still the origional liner in the pool! What I thought was pretty strange was when we removed the pool. The pool is a 27 foot round above ground pool. When we were taking out the liner, the part of the linewr that covered the sides were still soft and flexable like a liner should be, but the bottom was hard and brittle. If someone would have jumped in the pool and the heel of there foot his the bottom hard, there is no doubt it would have cracked or broken the liner being it was that brittle.

Below is a picture of the pool where it split and some pictures of the mud throughout the house.

TO BE CONTINUED.....