This is the end of my second week back to work with my wonderful part-time,
work from home job. And these last two weeks have been crazy, to say the least.
But first, let me back up to update a little more on
Project P.R.B. If you remember, two of three goals I set to achieve by the end of July were to hold a yard sale {to help eliminate all the items from the
major household purge} and to paint our office desk.
Sadly, neither of those were achieved by July's end. We had arranged and made plans to have the yard sale on the last Saturday in July. To my immense frustration, the weather forecast was threatening rain with multiple possible thunderstorms, so we decided to postpone the event. And then during the final days of July when I had planned to tackle the desk project and get it painted before I began my seasonal work, Makenna came down with some sort of virus which had her running a fever for nearly two days.
I vowed not to despair over my foiled plans.
So then, on the first Monday of August, I officially started working again. On Tuesday, it seemed Makenna could be coming down with yet another sickness. This time, it was much worse--she contracted croup. Our poor darling was coughing the most awful sound, and by Wednesday she started with a fever, too. Caring for her took up much of my free time.
And on top of this, I was finishing any last-minute preparations for our yard sale, because this past Saturday was our rescheduled yard sale day. By Friday, our house was a complete and utter disaster with the categorized piles of items sorted here and there, ready to be taken out and displayed in the early hours of Saturday.
I am happy to report that our garage sale was a success! Not only did we bypass the minimum amount I was wanting to make in order to feel that the whole effort was worth it, but we made just $1.50 short of my overall goal. What we earned was exactly enough to put together a new coffee bar in our dining room, which will give me a lot more usable counter space in our little kitchen. {I will be blogging the results soon when the coffee bar is all put together!} I can't even begin to tell you how wonderfully free I felt after eradicating all that
stuff for the yard sale, whether it was purchased or later dropped off at the Salvation Army. It was as if a thousand pounds were lifted off of my shoulders, I tell you!
Then this past week, we had another big event. If you might recall, we live in the greater Metro Detroit area, and we had some massive rainstorms come through Monday evening that left a wake of devastating flooding. I'm not talking about flooding up to the rooftops or anything that severe, but rather several feet of water in many folks' basements, and most major roadways closed due to the flooding {which in places, flooded enough to almost submerge cars}. Apparently there were even a few elderly folks who drowned.
It is quite a sight to presently drive up and down our street and the surrounding neighborhoods.
Every house has piled furniture, carpeting, and boxes upon boxes of personal items at the curb for the garbage service to haul away. I was blown away when I went on a walk with Makenna to see all the damage that was done. And that's when I realized exactly how lucky we are.
Most people had inches, if not feet, of flooding in their basements due to sewer backup. We, however, did not have that. We have a sump pump in our basement and for the first forty five minutes or so of the torrential rains, we didn't realize that our sump pump didn't trigger for some reason. Matt was able to trip it and the pump started working immediately and stayed working, thankfully. But we did have a carpeted area of about five feet by ten feet that had gotten well-soaked from water coming up through our sump pump hole. {Our basement is partially finished with dry wall and carpeting, and one area of our basement is completely finished, which we have made into a cozy little family room.}
We diligently worked at getting the water out, cleaning the carpet, and drying it as much as possible. But the damage had been done and there was no question that unless we wanted a super-stinky basement {that likely would have ended up moldy, too}, we'd have to pull out the wet carpet. The wetness had spread to a very large area, so about half of our basement carpet was taken out.
And then, by some miracle, we discovered that we have some kind of allowance in our homeowners insurance policy that would help cover damages. We don't have flood insurance so I don't know how this worked out exactly, but when they said they wanted to send us a check and waive our need to meet the deductible, I was beyond ecstatic. We haven't heard of anyone who has had any kind of insurance coverage to help with repair and replacement, which is such a shame given that most people had much worse damage than we did.
The carpet company came out today and we can re carpet our entire basement for $20
less than the amount of the check we're receiving from the insurance company. We are still in disbelief!!! Oh my goodness, what an
incredible blessing we have received. We are praising the Lord because truly in this situation, it is only His hand that could have provided this gift for us.
Next week, this beauty will be in our basement:
A tremendous blessing in disguise from the water damage.
And now, here's to hoping things quiet down around here and we can settle into a little bit more normalcy!
