New Flooring

I've been away for several days because we were putting new flooring in our house! Hang on, because this will be a long post of pictures. We were saving for new floors and had planned on purchasing them this year but when my husband had his hours cut, this savings was put on hold. We figured new floors would have to wait until at least next year and we were fine with that. Our carpet is only four years old but with a toddler and a dog, it was looking pretty bad. Our plans changed this year though when we experienced a flood. On May 1, we woke up to hear water running into our basement. Something had broke on the refrigerator in the middle of the night and the water was quickly flooding our upstairs and working its way through the ceiling to the basement. The even worse part - we had just changed insurance companies a week and a half before. We were labeled as suspicious for several days and almost had our insurance suspended but God had other plans. We were blessed with a great insurance adjuster who took one look at the fridge and knew we weren't suspicious. Here are a few pictures from that day. The first is the area by the fridge. The side panel of cabinets was ruined and has to be replaced (we are waiting for the cabinet company to fix this). The carpet all around this area was flooded and it was quickly heading down our hall. The kitchen floor started molding by the fridge a few days later.

This picture is of our basement. We caught it before it ruined too much of the carpet but they still had to take two large patches of padding out. It took 6 fans, 2 dehumidifiers, and almost a week to dry out our house. Thank goodness for ServPro because they helped us minimize the damage. We were put up in a hotel for several days due to all of the fans in our house.

It took us several months to find a drywaller to fix our basement ceiling. With the exception of this and the cabinet, we have done all of the work our self. This brings me to pictures of this weekend. This first ones shows our house Friday night, before we pulled up the carpet. Please pardon the massive mess on the counters and floor - it is usually much cleaner than that. We have been living with no padding on our carpet near the kitchen and in the hall for months now.

This one shows part of the carpet up. We pulled all of the carpet upstairs except for the bedrooms.

This final picture shows our new floor. The floor is now in the living room, dining room, two halls and kitchen. We have not moved all of our furniture back as my husband and his dad did not finish the floor until late yesterday and then we both had to work today. Tomorrow's project is to find my house again and then enjoy the new floor. It is so nice to have the new floor and not have to vacuum every day or clean up all of the spills my toddler has. Later this week, ServPro will be back to fix the carpet in the basement. It will be nice to finally have my house in order again after living in a construction zone for months.

I hope I did not bore you with my long post but I thought it would be nice for you to have a glimpse into my life. Next time we decide we want to upgrade something in our house, I pray we don't have to go through something as stressful as this flood but I do thank God for the insurance money as it helped provide our new floor.