Well Pavan met the insurance appraiser at the house this morning, he was shocked by the extent of the damage. He told Pavan it would be 6 to 8 weeks before we can move back into the house, which was a shock to us because we'd previously been told 2 or 3 weeks. It's been almost a week though, and they are still trying to dry out the house. The upstairs seems to be nearly dry, but the basement is still very wet. Of course all I can see are the superficial surfaces. Apparently the walls and such are still very wet, the appraiser looked up into the basement ceiling and said all of the 2x4s are still wet. How do you dry out the insides of walls, heck if I know! What I do know is that it takes a lot of time.
As things start to dry, the extent of the damage becomes more apparent. The hard wood flooring in the kitchen is so warped at this point that it's nearly impossible to walk across, you just can's get your footing it's so bumpy. The ceiling of the sauna looks the same, horrible! And just yesterday a new stain started to form on the ceiling of the toy room, this time all the way at the edge of the house....clear across the room from where part of the ceiling collapsed. What a mess!
The good news is that our insurance company is taking good care of us. He even told us to go ahead and call an electrician and someone from the phone company to make sure nothing was damaged. Our electric panels are all in the laundry room, which was one of the worst affected areas of the house. (I opened the washing machine 2 days ago just to make sure there weren't any clothes inside and found that it was completely full of water!!) Also, when Connie first discovered the flooding she tried to call DJ to come over, but our phones wouldn't work, they were just static. We already had someone from the well drilling company come out and take a look in the pump room. He had to replace a switch which was apparently ruined from the constant running of the water when it flooded...even that is covered by our insurance. What a blessing!!
If it truly takes that long for us to move back home, we might have to look at kenneling the animals, at least the dogs. For now, we've been having nice weather, but the next 8 weeks will surely see colder weather and our first significant snowfall. The cats are all safe in the house (we found Sweetie Pea two days ago, and Kindra was able to get her inside yesterday), but the dogs are living in the garage. Poor puppies!
I'll try to get a few more pictures when I go out to feed the animals this afternoon. Hopefully the girls' clothing will be back today, Anna has a slumber party tonight and the one set of PJs she brought to KC with us are WAY too small! Guess we'll be making a trip to WalMart for some new PJs if the clothes aren't back yet.
I just have to comment again on how wonderful the people of Rhinelander have been to us. The girl from gymnastics brought Anna a leotard when she heard what happened and saw that the only one Anna had left was way too small. The principal at the Catholic school sent us a very nice card and some gift certificates to McDonalds. All of the women with the pregnancy resource center have offered to help in any way possible, from cleaning at the house to washing all of our wet laundry. People Pavan works with and even some of the patients he's seen in clinic have been asking how they can help, offering clothing for us and the kids. It's just been wonderful to have so much support, you always see the best in the people around you when things are at their worst!
Better get going, Noah will be out of school soon and I need to run by and pick up some more medicine for the dogs before I pick him up.
More later,
Rebecca
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