I know I don’t. I snapped these on the way out of my house this morning. Junkity Junk everywhere!! It is starting to kill me. Slowly and painfully. For perspective: I have already unpacked most all boxes that we packed up. And it STLL looks like this. I’ll have to post finished shots when (IF) I ever get it all finished. I need to redeem myself. So if you’re worried about your house or think it’s too messy, this little lady has got you beat!
Woah. Night before last was bananas. Let’s recap:
I had gotten home last night a bit later than usual from work. Husband had stopped by BigH and DD’s house to do some work related things and she, like any good mother of boys, sent him home with food. Tons. Of. Food. She has had great support from friends bringing her meals while she’s been in treatment and she really has too much to even eat, so she’s been sharing the wealth.
She also sent Husband home with this:
We both have a love for Ginger Ale. From my understanding {Facts provided by Husband, which are not always reliable. He has a problem with remembering details sometimes… love ya hun!} this is the kind of ginger ale they have at the hospital. DD doesn’t like to drink it because it makes her nauseous.
Sidenote: A common thing when going through these types of treatments is psychological nausea. My Aunt Soonie can’t even go on the floor for infusions without feeling nauseous. Her nausea is real, but it is caused by something unreal like her thoughts & feelings of knowing this is where she gets Chemo, and the Chemo makes her nauseous.
So DD was thinking that it only made her nauseous because that is what you drink where she gets her chemo. Well I was very excited and since we haven’t been to the store we are slim pickins’ on food and drinks. I popped a can open and took a gulp. Then, IMMEDIATELY regretted my decision.
Woah.
If you know my sister and me, you know our gag reflex is sensitive, and severe. I will admit hers is worse than mine, but we’ve both got it. Bad. Last week for Halloween she had to bring me her son’s inflatable Buzz Lightyear wings to blow up because when she blows things up she gags. If I even smell Peanut Butter or Shrimp, I’m done. Ask any of our friends. When I swallowed that stuff I immediately ran to the sink, gagging and guzzling water from the kitchen facet. Ew. Then it hit me, a wave a Nausea. I mean like seriously, I haven’t been out for the count, that bad, that quickly.
We had planned to hang all of our curtains and blinds in the den/dining room, but I couldn’t even stand up without feeling sick. So I retired to bed and barely made it through all of Modern Family. I was out like a light at 8:30 PM.
Then the next thing I know…
We get woken up by this noise that sounds like our alarm but it wasn’t set (we are sill waiting on one contact to be put on the window upstairs so that we can turn it on). In a hazy frenzy we are running around trying to identify the terrible noise and turn it off. Then we realize:
IT IS OUR SMOKE ALARMS!!!!!! All of them are going off at the same time in a manner and decibel level that made you want to bust your own eardrums so you didn’t have to hear it anymore. I haven’t felt that level of fear in a long time. As we’re running around the house trying to find out what is causing them to go off, the last 4 months are flashing through my brain like I’m getting ready to repeat them. No sir. That option is simply unacceptable. In our sleeping stupor we finally figured out that there was nothing to cause the alarms to go off. No smoke or smoldering. It was just some sort of malfunction. Joy. Love those things happening at 2:30 AM. Love it.
The next day, (yeterday) Rooster sent the electrician over to check things out:
He thinks the one in the basement went off because it is close to the furnace and the fumes from running the heat for the first time in a while may have triggered it. We’re going to watch it the next few days and see if it happens again. Fingers Crossed not. Just another day in our life…
Now, I must admit. It is weird to live in a house that you used to live in and it feel so different. Our dining room is the same, we’ve changed the den and guest room, and our bedroom is finally complete! I’ll take some pictures for the handful of you dying to see!
It’s been funny to watch Jackson get reacquainted with the space. As you remember, he is our yellow lab I inherited with marriage. He’s slowly and surely growing on me. It’s like he kind of remembers where everything is in the house but second guesses himself all the time. He runs past doors, goes in the guest room looking for his kennel when it’s in the bathroom right now (we were waiting for the new hardwoods to dry so we put his kennel in the bathroom since it’s stone), you get the idea. Since there have been so many construction people in and out of our house for months there are all these little scent rabbit trails I can tell he picks up on. He will walk to the kitchen then immediately turn around and head somewhere else in the house hot on the trail, then it just stops and he looks confused. But there is one thing he didn’t forget: Our Saturday Morning Routine.
Husband usually gets up Saturdays to go to the shooting range; he lets Jackson out to run around and then leaves him in our room with the door shut when he leaves. I am obviously still asleep w hen all of this happens because I hate mornings. Jackson usually then curls himself up in a ball by my side of the bed on the floor until I wake up a bit (ah hem, few hours) later. I cannot tell you how many times I have woken up and stepped on him getting out of bed.
Well this past Saturday morning, our first back in the house, I woke up, looked down and saw this:
It was like we had never even left. For a few seconds I kind of forgot the past 4 months. It felt like the Twilight Zone. In those few seconds this loud, messy, hyper, sock-eating, fence-jumping fur ball was telling me that we have made it through the deep waters. Things may be a bit chaotic still, but we are all gonna be just fine and I’m gonna get my groove back, one Saturday morning at a time.
We made it! BrotherH and his wife came to help us! All we did was move in our bedroom and kitchen boxes so I can start putting things away tomorrow! I would post a pic but I’m I’m bed and exhausted! More to come tomorrow!!
This is gonna be a quick update! And probably a long post, so don’t say I didn’t wan ya!
I didn’t want to blog about the fun stuff (ie: moving and decorating) without writing about what all it took to get here. As much as I seriously wish I could just block out the last 4 months, I can’t. The headaches, frustrations and countless times I had “reached my limit” need to be out there. Not only for my memory-obsessing personality but also for people out there who may find themselves where I am (God forbid) later in life. It’s not fun, but I can see positives that have come from it. I would not say Jim and my 6 months has been especially “Normal” per say. We’ve had a lot to deal with, a lot of stress, uncertainty and have had to learn to trust. Trust each other & trust the Lord. But that is a whole other post. If we can have this much day-to-day fun under these circumstances I am really looking forward to getting back to the groove of what every other newlywed couple of ours is getting to do!
So here is the progress:
I’m pretty sure the last time I left you guys (probably hanging in utter suspense, ha.ha.) they had taken the walls down and the ceiling out upstairs to start sanding the burnt char studs and clean out all of the burnt insulation. After they did that the first thing was to cover the joists with Kiltz, which is pretty much a higher grade primer. Traditionally you use it on the joists in the ceiling to block out the soot odors and such. But Rooster wanted to paint the whole entire inside of the upstairs just to be safe. So the inside, being the studs, frame, and all structural part that are usually behind the sheetrock, look like this:
Looks like Tom Sawyer came & white washed our whole house!
Where Jim stored all of his treasures
Better view of the whole upstairs
Then the next step is re-wiring the house. The man to the right in the picture above is our electrician. He marked where the plugs were going and remarked the lights. We added a few more plugs around the room for safety’s sake.
After that the walls went up. Well the sheetrock.
After the board went up they had to “mud” it. Which I learned means patching over the nail holes that hold the board to the studs and then patching over the seams between each board so that it makes a smooth surface when they paint over it all. This all took about a week or a week and a half. After that Cornerstone came and fogged the house. This is essentially like a bug bomb of sorts, where it releases gases and neutralizes and remaining odor and makes sure the walls are perfectly clean for painting.
Then we hit a hiccup. After all of that when we were going in to pick paint colors, we still smelled it… SMOKE. It was still there! Now if you know my family you know that my mom as the nose of a dog. She can smell ANYTHING. After my first house fire when I was little, mom became her own smoke alarm. We always joke and make fun, but I’ll share this little side story to show you how she proved her worth to us, so bear with me:
My dad was doing a graduate program at Harvard when we were younger. I was in 8th grade. That year he graduated so the whole fam when to Boston for the celebration. After the graduation we stayed up there for a few days to have a fun family trip. One night we were up in our hotel, on the 30th floor (can’t remember the number but it was waaaay high up) and my mom keeps telling us she smells smoke. None of us smelled anything but mom insisted. She was leaning out the window sniffing trying to identify the source of the smell. She kept persisting and we kept mocking her telling her she was paranoid. Well, as the mother usually does- she won out and we went downstairs to ask about it. Also, because she is a life long girl scout she made us take our purses and special belongings with us. So we get on the elevator and rode it the lone 30 flights down. RIGHT when the doors open firemen in full gear come toward us and the lights go out. Total blackout. I felt terrible for the wedding reception going on in the ballroom! They had to cut it short. In the dark we found the lobby manager and asked him what was going on. Apparently there was an UNDERGROUND ELECTRICAL FIRE THAT SPANNED 3 BOSTON STREET BLOCKS and no one was aware of it until the entire 3 blocks had a blackout. Then when the firemen checked the stuff underground, which is procedure, that is when the discovered. Little did they know if they had asked my mom hours ago, she would have been able to tell them. So, seriously, since that day if she ever said she smelled smoke, no one in my family questions her.
Back to present day: Obviously my mom walked in and her nose started scrunching like a bunny because she could smell it. We walked her all over the house like a hound dog and she deduced that the smell was only in the front of the house and kitchen. Once you got to the back of the house where the stairs started to go up to where the fire actually was, the smell was gone.
For a while we were really perplexed as to what the deal was. If you remember, we took out the whole wall in the den under the fire as well. We called Cornerstone since, you know, they are the experts at this. They told us it happens all the time and once you get the fresh paint on and finish the place out, the smell goes away. Yeah right. We were NOT going to finish the place if it still smelled. So they came back and smoke bombed the place again. We had high hopes, but once we could go back in, the smell was still there! At this point, even the untrained noses, such as my own, could smell it. Cornerstone told us to keep finished the room and the would bomb it one more time after everything was done.
My first instinct was no way jose and it made me feel better that dad and Rooster felt the same way After about 2 weeks of the troubleshooting my dad told Rooster to take out a piece of the ceiling. And there it was… the ENTIRE ceiling of our first floor was totally black with soot! The insulation looked like a sponge that had soaked up all the soot and smoke. Great. The whole ceiling had to come out. Which tacked on another 2ish weeks to this whole process.
Check out that really black piece in the front. Sick.
Ceiling Sheetrock. If you look closely in the back you can see where the lines of the studs kept the soot from hitting that part.
Burnt rafters at the very top of our vaulted ceilings.
Kitchen with no ceiling. The whole house looked like this.
We think that the water from the firemen’s hoses washed soot all over the inside of the ceiling. It was the total opposite of our white washed upstairs, it was as if someone had painted it black. So new sheetrock had to be put up there as well, then mudded, skinned, and prepped for painting as well.
Essentially every surface in the house got a new, fresh coat of paint which I was excited about. Our landlord/cousin’s aunt on the other side of the family was really like and basically let us pick what we wanted as long as it wasn’t wacky. I picked a warm tone for the walls called Wheeling Neutral. We lost the faux finish in the front living sections so I picked a color that was similar to the hues of the faux finish. Then I did a lighter neutral called Manchester Tan for the cabinets, trim, and under counter surfaces for a soft, subtle contrast. It looks pretty good if I do say so myself.
So the painters got to painting and then the new carpet was rolled out in the Master Bedroom. Then they Put down the baseboards again and painted those, did last minute touch ups and painted the trim in the closets.
The carpet I chose was thicker than the one we had before, so they had to come a bit of the doors off the bottom so they would open and close over it. Sounded kind of scary to me, but it is standard procedure.
While they were doing the carpet the finish of the wood floors was stripped off. There was a lot of water damage in the front of the house from the hoses, and then when our freezer thawed out totally when the power was cut to the house, it left a big sitting puddle in the kitchen. This past Tuesday they put the first stain coat and one poly coat. It had to dry for 48 hours so today they are putting on the last poly finishing coat. It will sit today and tomorrow and tomorrow night…
WE GET TO MOVE IN!! (I still cannot even believe it.) So there you go, 3.5 months of work in a few paragraphs. Wish the real process was only that long!
It’s been a while. We have really been covered up lately between the construction and family stuff. A lot more than I expected. Here is the mini update:
For 4 of our 6 months of marriage we have been living with my Parents. Husband has officially lived with my parents twice as long as he’s lived with me. You gotta admit, that’s kinda funny.
Construction definitely had some hiccups, but that is to be expected. Nothing too bad. I have some pictures on my phone that I’ll post later about the electrical wiring and the wall board going up etc.
The house looks really great right now…. it’s kind of funny that we took all of the effort, emotional stress and worry among other emotions to end up with a house that looks exactly the same as before! But it looks really nice. AAAAAND…..
WE GET TO MOVE IN TOMORROW!!!! Did ya hear me?
WE GET TO MOVE IN TOMORROW!!!!!
Yup. I could not be more thrilled!! The last coat of the hardwood sealer is going on this morning so it will sit tonight and Friday. We are kind of pushing it trying to move in tomorrow afternoon. BUT I simply cannot sleep in the gameroom one more night.
This date was also the very-last-emergency-worst-case-scenario-date that Uncle Rooster gave us so I’ve been holding out for so long.
Our plan is to move the bedroom stuff tomorrow through the back of the house so we can go straight on the carpet and not the hardwoods. We are also going to try and move most of our kitchen boxes in that night as well so I can start putting those up and away Saturday morning. We will get to move the rest of our furniture in on Monday. And for the even better news…
We got new furniture for the den and I am TOTALLY in love with it. We had been using a lot of hand me downs from my mom, so fortunate to have been able to, but they all weren’t totally my style and I never really sat in there because I didn’t love it. I would always watch TV in our bedroom because I love the way it looks and feels since I picked everything out 🙂
Well the timing just happened right now and Husband finally came around to it. We thought it would be good to go ahead and get new furniture so that it would be ready to move in to the house when we could. That way we didn’t have to move in the old stuff and then a few months from now move all that out and new stuff in. I am so grateful and thankful! I’ll take some before and afters so y’all can see the progress!
I cannot even believe that tomorrow night I will be sleeping in a house, in an actual bedroom, with my husband and without my parents. Who would have even thought….!! I can hardly stand it.
Thank you so much for your prayers, support, and messages you’ve sent me over this time. It has truly meant so much and really helped us stick all of this out!
Next time you hear from me I’ll be in my cute little house! Probably frustrated with all of the junk I have to put up 🙂
THEY ARE STARTING ON OUR HOUSE TODAY!!!!! WOOT WOOT!
Since the last post I wrote about them gutting the upstairs and evaluating from there. It turns out there were a few “uh-oh’s” in the roof as Rooster had suspected. So it will tack on a little time for that before they can start the build out. There will be like an 8’ft square section of the roof that will need to come off to fix a few beams for structural soundness, and then they will start rebuilding the upstairs.
While the roof and beams are being fixed the guys will sand down the studs. Most all of them got charred but just on the edges, nothing to compromise the structural integrity of the wood so it’s safe to sand it off. This gets rid of the odor and will keep it from permeating through the new sheet rock to be put up. It also saves TONS of money since you don’t have to buy new lumber. Then Cornerstone will come in and nutralize the home. It sounds similar to what a bug bomb would be…? They will come in tomorrow and fumigate the house. No one can go in or out and no doors or windows can be opened for 24 hours. Remember, since we are renters our insurance only covered our possessions, so when the crew came they didn’t clean anything that was part of the house, just our things in it.
After the studs are sanded and the house is odor bombed, we will be full speed ahead!! I am so afraid to even say it outloud. eek!
Well I thought I would give y’all a little looksie into how we are living as of late. For those of you just finding your way here to my blog, we are in my parent’s basement for the time being. It is kind of a double edged sword. On the one hand I completely recognize that, for our situation, we are in a blessed spot. Our parents have space for us, and all of our stuff. We aren’t having to pay rent on our house, which is a little extra unexpected savings, and we aren’t having to pay rent to live somewhere else. We are in an area close to our house so our daily routines like work and groceries {HA to husband if he’s reading. He knows I hate grocery shopping} etc aren’t a big change. Our commutes to work are basically the same. Overall the space works pretty well for us. We have set up our bedroom in the game room and there is a den and TV down there so we use that as our den.
My parents have been great to live with. Maybe it’s easier for me to adjust because I’m used to living with them. They give us our space and never come downstairs, we have as much privacy as if we were in our home. But it just feels weird to live in my basement. The place I used to be so scared I couldn’t watch Scooby Doo alone in because of all the windows downstairs at night. We have our essential stuff set up for daily usage but everything else is in boxes wherever there is space to put them. It never really feels clean because there is so much stuff, which wears on my spirit every now and then. I think this is also the Lord’s way of teaching me to unclench a bit… 🙂 So here you are, fasten your seatbelts and enjoy the ride/tour!
When you first go down the stairs into the basement, you enter the billiard room. We now refer to it as the holding cell. As far as living down there, this room has no functional purpose. The pool table has kind of become the surface where we put things we know we can’t lose, but they have no place to go. It usually stays there until I can find a place to store it. Some things will probably stay there until we move out.
Holding Cell
You’ve seen in the previous picture that behind the pool table is a little kitchenette area. It’s got a sink and dishwasher. There just isn’t an oven or stove. It’s been nice to have a bit of a kitchen. We use our toaster oven (thank you DD) a lot and when you’re cooking for 2, you really don’t need anything bigger.
The Kitchen
You pass through the kitchen into….
Game Room Entrance
… our closet/bedroom/den/office/vanity 🙂 You enter the room straight into our clothes we have out to wear on these rolling racks we stole from the attic. Here’s a better look:
"His and Hers Walk-In Closets" more like "Walk-Around" closets!
Then you will look back to your right and see:
Fooseball table/shoe cover
Every single pair of shoes I own stacked under the pool table so they don’t take up space! I have been made fun of for as long as I can remember because I keep each pair of shoes it its own plastic bin. It for one thing, is easier to stack in smaller closet space, but that is the ONLY reason my shoes stayed clean! If I didn’t have them in boxes, I would have had to wipe down and try and salvage the ones that I could, but some would be beyond fixing because of the materials they are made of. So “ha” to all you doubters 🙂
Then look behind you and you will see:
Jim's Dresser/TV
It’s funny how even in this room that is much bigger than our old one, we still set it up the exact same way haha. That is an old dresser of mine that Jim puts all his shorts/shirts in. Usually we have a smaller tv on the dresser, but this one was in our den and we didn’t have a safe way to store it, so we just use it.
Next is our:
Bed
Pretty drab huh? We usually have gray and white shams but it was just too depressing and not practical to put them up here. Notice that the headboard is an old, uncovered upholstered one, propping itself against an AIR HOCKEY TABLE. Pretty classy 😉 Behind that headbaord on top of the hockey table is a bunch of bags and miscellaneous stuff I didn’t know where do put, so I tossed it there. Probably more so because of my tiredness of finding places to put and store things really.
But please notice the 2 little treasures I did keep out:
Bedside tables and Lamps
Love them. A lot. We figured they would just sit against some wall so we might as well use them for now.
If your back is to the bed and you’re facing the TV, to the left is this:
Chest
Try not to cringe at all the clutter. I know I am right now as I look at it and think about it being that way at home. This is my grandmothers chest. I took it with me to Auburn my senior year and it’s stayed with me ever since. Our decorative pillows are in the plastic bags underneath for safe keeping. The huge pile of clothes to the right is really just all the clothes spilling out of my laundry basket 🙂 The blue blanket to the left is spare bedding of my mom’s we used when we first moved home because we washed our sheets and couldn’t find them in the boxes and our comforter and burned up totally in the fire.
If you look to the right you will see this:
Step into our Office/Shuffleboard Table
There is a huuugely long shuffleboard table that takes up this entire wall of the room. We laid a blanket over this part so the beads and sand didn’t get on our stuff and set my desktop up there. We don’t use it as much since we don’t have hard wired internet down there, but the big screen is nice when I’m designing at home. The printer is to the right and our fan for sleeping. Farther down the table is my makeshift vanity area.
Vanity
This is where I straighten my hair etc. I just set it up this week so I’m still getting used to it. One thing that is cool is that above the table are my dad’s old records. There is like 30 or 40 of them from when he was a kid/teenager. You think we will be doing that with our CDs?
Right Side
Left Side
Some of the covers are pretty funny when you think about them watching over us all the time. Such as these:
Oh and we also have tons of boxes under the table so they don’t take up space either.
That is about all of our main multi-purpose room. If you walk through the billiard room again and turn to the left, you enter the downstairs den:
Jackson and Husband hangin' out
Which is also where Husband has set up, what I like to call the “Mobile Bullet Station”
Mobile Bullet Station
Please notice that Husband put wheels on the table so he can just move the sucker around and tinker wherever his little heat desires.
On a side note. The picture below is of my wedding book and a few invitations I still have left to put in there. For months it sat on the buffet table in our home and I was just too lazy to take it out of that ziploc baggie and display it. Maybe because I wasn’t finished with it, maybe because I was just lazy. I’m not really sure the reason, but so glad I didn’t get around to it because I know for a fact that the soot and smoke would have ruined that beautiful, stark white book. So thankful.
Wedding Book
I will leave you will the following picture just for fun. Our game room has a lot of childhood pictures collages in it and I thought this one was fun from the 8th grade cheerleading days. Go Bruins.
Green and Gold Forever
Well, you haven’t head from me in a while because there hasn’t been much to report. We’ve been waiting to get all the paperwork sorted out so that we can start remediation. There was a bit of a delay from us filling out the forms since we know about the damage, to getting them to the homeowner to sign, since we’re renting. All in all it took about a week which isn’t too bad. We got word that the crew was going to start this past Thursday.
So, I went by the house Friday at lunch to see how things have been going, when I pulled up the street this is what I saw:
Ain't it Grand?? A construction truck!
That gorgeous construction truck. HUUUUGE news. The crew started the process of gutting the house. I said it earlier, but for those of you just tuning in: we are gutting the entire upstairs and all areas affected by the fire/burned and will then assess what needs to be replaced. The company didn’t feel comfortable giving a bid without seeing behind the surfaces. SOO I went by to “check on things.” {I’ll admit it, I’m a control freak.} But I just want to be sure everything is done right, the first time. None of this re-doing stuff. So here are a few pictures of the inside. Crazy to see the walls missing.
Looking straight up standing in the front doorway. The overhang above the guest bedroom/bath.
Looking to the right from the front entry.
Standing in the living room facing the kitchen and back of the house.
Back entryway to the upstairs. Our room is to the left of the guy on the ladder.
Looking up the stairs from our bedroom
Insulation at the top of the stairs.
Upstairs, with no walls. Still messy but lookin' good!
Looking down into the kitchen.
Burned out can lights.
The carpet practically discenigrated, leaving hardwood floors we had no idea were there!
Overhang above the guest bath.
It’s still hard for me to believe that this is actually happening. I have been used to our poor house being frozen in time: covered in soot, nothing moved since July 9th, that it is weird to think progress is actually being made. I feel like I have been floating through life lately and trying to hard to make my new circumstances a temporary normal so that I can {in all seriousness} keep my sanity. It’s like if I don’t really stop and think about where we are currently I won’t have to be upset about it. I have trouble picturing myself actually moving back in the {near} future. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely cannot cannot wait, but picturing it in my head now is like a blurry out of focus day. Our countdown of being displaced is currently 1 month and 1 week as of today. I am hoping that we will be back in in early November and hopefully by my birthday at the latest! We are meeting with an adjuster tomorrow to talk about one of the beams possible need replacement that he didn’t factor into his estimate. I hope it goes well, so far this company has been a complete PAIN IN THE NECK to deal with. So I’m not getting my hopes up. Fingers crossed!
I never thought this day would come! Uncle Rooster is taking some guys to the house to survey the damage and get a plan for CONSTRUCTION!! Did ya hear me?! I said CONSTRUCTION!!
Now growing up in a building family, that is one thing I’m used to: the headaches and pain-in-the-necks that come with construction. But today, today my friends, this is sweet music to my ears! I cannot even believe it. Yeah for PROGRESS!!
Husband and I took Rooster to the house yesterday for him to check it out so he could lay out a plan. Today he is there with the electricians and one of our building guys to get an estimate on the cost to gut the upstairs to the studds.
Part of this process has been dealing with the homeowner’s insurance company which has been less than pleasant. I do realize in general it isn’t a fun process, but like I said previously, I will deal with that in a later post since we are still working things out…
But for now, meet Uncle Rooster or just plain Rooster, whichever I’m in the mood for.
Uncle Rooster
This is where you will find him 90% of the time while he is at the office: in my doorway buggin’ and pickin’ on me. You see his office is at the opposite end of the hallway, but his assistant Kathy who is the keeper of all information, has her desk next to my office. So he usually ends up in our little cubby hole.
Much like this. Obviously staged. Rooster knows which one of them really runs the show
Rooster lives on a farm, bails his own hay and raises animals with his wife LouAnn, I want to give her a nickname but it so so classic and fitting of her there can be no other substitute. Now she is one tough cookie. She runs the pediatric burn unit at Children’s Hospital downtown and keeps Rooster in line in her spare time, which we all know up here at the office is high near impossible 🙂
Being that he grew up in what he calls the “cuuntry” he also speaks his own language.
“Sure as fat meets greasy” means “yes”
“Bull no” means “no”
“Come on” is when he answers his phone and really means to say “This is Rooster how can I help you?”
The list goes on and on. I’ll add a few here and there as they pop up.
But all joking aside, Rooster can really get down to business and get a job done. He takes care of people and in this case will be taking care of us. He took our electrician and site builder (? Not sure of their official titles.. is that bad that I work with them and don’t know that??) to check it out this morning. This is what they came up with:
1. If the wiring was more than 60% burned the whole house had to be rewired. Praise the Lord that it was not, so they will only have to rewire the upstairs, which is what we were expecting cost wise. We will also probably get him to add a few plugs to avoid another fire….!
2. They are going to gut the entire upstairs to the studds and then look at what needs to be done. Some estimates are hard for them to make now without seeing behind the wall board. After they get to the studds they will better be able to tell what all needs to be done to restore the upstairs.
3. There will need to be some work done on the ceilings as well and probably a fresh coat of paint on the whole place.
Flight of a Phoenix 