Upside Down

Oh. My. God. What a flippin' gong show! All I can keep saying is that I'm thankful it wasn't a fire or sewage. But still...our life (more specifically, our home) has been turned upside down.

At 7:30am this morning, we recieved a call from First General Services saying they and the adjuster would be there within the hour. At 8:30am, two cars, two trucks, a dump truck and a moving van pulled into our driveway. Worker after worker after worker piled out of the vehicles carrying tools, boxes, tape, blankets etc. I hadn't even had a cup of coffee yet and my house was being invaded.

And invasive is the right word. The workers were there to pack everything up and haul it out of the basement. BUT as they were packing, they were instructed to go over every. single. item and assess it for water damage. Every book. Every knick knack. Every DVD. Every. thing. My mind began to whirl and I started to question whether I had forgotten about some long lost porn collection or naked photos from a drunken party I couldn't remember. My chest began to tighten up at the thought of strangers going through all our belongings. It was a little like being broken into.

By noon, 90% of the goods have been removed. The bathroom has been ripped apart and the unused spare bedroom has had one entire wall removed and the rest of the crappy lino ripped out. The basement looks like it did 2 years ago when we were renovating...tools and junk all over the place.

The final estimate? $20,000 worth of damage/labour/repair etc. Yowzers. The upside is that we will get a brand new bathroom (with us paying the difference between the estimated value of the old one and the new one) and we will have both bedrooms totally finished. We are replacing the carpet with lino that looks like hardwood. I know it's not as comfy or warm as carpet, but we can throw some area rugs down. Lino/laminate is just so much easier to keep clean and animal hair-free than carpet is.

The most stressful part right now is having all of our basement belongings put into storage. Our couches are gone, the TV, most of Colby's stuff (besides his clothes and mattress), our filing cabinet, computer stuff, DVDs, my teaching stuff...everything...has been loaded up and hauled away.

I have requested that several things are to be brought upstairs...the computer, my treasure trunk and other small things I don't want put into storage. Colby will be moving into his old room (what will become the nursery) but it won't totally become his room since it's also our computer room/catch all room that we still need access to. He will have his mattress, a laundry basket for his clothes, an alarm clock and his TV and that's about it.

So now it's a matter of finding space for some of these things. Colby can't have all this crap piled in his room, but it has to go somewhere. I don't want it just sitting in the living room (and it can't be out there for my birthday). And it's not just for a little while...the adjuster said it could take up to 4 months to have all of this done, which leads me to question "When will we get the nursery done if Colby is living in there until November?".

It's just a little overwhelming right now. Amazing how an inch of water can cause so much turmoil :-)