"All words are symbols that represent unspeakable realities. Which is also why words are magical." (Donald Miller tweet)

Monday, June 29, 2009

unexpected reno

We had a plan for this house. It wasn't set in stone, but the items in the plan lined up nicely in my mind.

Some of the items have a nice check mark beside them.

Replace the floors in the front half of the house - check.
Redo the bathroom - check.
Front perennial garden established - check
Back gardens cleaned up, begin vegetable-growing experiment - check

Most of the plans are yet to come.

New hardware in the kitchen
New paint in the kitchen
New curtains and blinds in the kitchen
Fix the front porch
Fix the driveway
Put a second floor on the front half of the house for a seriously AWESOME master bedroom

... and waaaaaaayyyy down the list .... at the bottom .... was an item vaguely referred to as "change the basement so it doesn't feel like the inside of a mint tictac".

And then it stormed last Thursday. And while I contentedly reflected upstairs on the fact that our house is higher than most of our neighbours, so our basement has never flooded ... well, it flooded. Backed-up sewer kind of flooding.

Of course, since I don't generally hang out on the inside of a tictac, I didn't know this. Spike called me at work on Friday to query about the carpet that was oozing ick under his bare feet.

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....pause to give thanks for insurance....

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And now our basement carpet and sub-flooring have been ripped out, as have entire sections of wall, and yes, the random toilet. Industrial size fans are down there right now, drying things up and drowning out the sound of any planes flying overhead. The smell of disinfectant spray is wafting gently through our home.

Moving that vague "change the basement" item right to the top of the list.

*sigh*

It was just important to me that you knew ... we had a plan.