One person's disaster...

...can be another person's divine intervention.

As you might have heard, we had a pretty wild weekend. There were so many tornado warnings that it seems like sirens are still ringing in my ears. The northern part of the county experienced some pretty nasty flooding. Last night, they treated parts of Millington, where my mom lives and works, like a disaster zone. You could only get in or out if you had ID. I think there's even a curfew. Neighborhoods, businesses and the navy base have been evacuated. My mom's apartment complex partially flooded. Her stuff is ok because she's on the second floor but I made her come stay with us just in case she got stuck there with no way out...and also to save her car. This is a photo of the back of her apartment complex, taken from the Ledger's facebook page. She lives in the front and it wasn't as bad there.


Saturday morning, in between tornado warnings, I went over the the new house where Mike's dad had already started working. I saw the water on the back patio earlier but didn't think anything of it because the previous owners mentioned that the patio flooded sometimes...our current home's patio occasionally did the same thing before we found a good trench path so no big deal, right?


Well, I was in the breakfast area cleaning the nastiness that the previous owners left when I noticed that water was coming in. Papa D ventured out to see what was up while I tried to mop up the water that was swimming around the room into the pantry and laundry room at an alarming rate. He was able to figure out that leaves had gunked up the gate and the drain and once he cleared it, most of the water left. We also found out that one part of the flower bed back there is too low and will have to be raised. Some of the work in the photo above is P'd, Mike and Donnie's hard work from today: digging a ditch to put in a new drain on that side of the house. P'd also got on the roof to clear gutters that hadn't been cleared in over a year during Saturday's rain. This is under the living room window where they installed the drain to reroute water in the future:


Later that night, Donnie came by and happened to have his moisture tester with him...he works at service master corporate in the insurance division but he used to do disaster restoration at one of their franchises. He looked at the breakfast area and said it was wet but not terrible and gave us some tips on helping it dry. I asked him to check some of the upstairs windows and, since I had seen the pooling water, under the living room window, even though no water had come in there. It was about then that we realized that the paneling was all bumpy and swollen. The meter registered so much water that they pulled out the baseboards and part of the paneling to find this:


It looks like that area has been getting waterlogged and then drying for years. Honestly, I'm so glad this epic Noah's Ark flooding happened so coincidentally on our first weekend of ownership. I confess I was in the dumps when it happened...some of our boxes got wet and our move-in has really been delayed but, you know, it could have been worse. This "potentially mold" stuff could have grown. The water could have kept rotting the wood over the years. And then we'd have to do this with all of our furniture in the house and with no other house to live in while we reconstruct:


There's even a small side-benefit. The living room is painted paneling. So, we're (well, Papa D and Mike are) going to put sheetrock in the rest of the living room. So much for move-in ready, huh?? Between this and getting rid of the popcorn ceiling, I can't believe this is a house we thought wouldn't be a big project!


As far as our open house tonight, it was nonexistent. We had nice weather but open houses are notoriously slow and it probably doesn't help that half the county is underwater and people are also catching up on the things they couldn't do Friday and Saturday because of the rain. Ah, well! I got to do some work work (as opposed to house work) and my house is clean. Plus I have pretty sodas and flowers that I got for the open house:


I guess all this should get me down. But I was really feeling bad about the house not selling and now I am grateful that we have someplace clean to live while we do all this work. And...no one can tell me it was chance that I was there when it flooded. That Papa D was there and single-handedly stopped the rest of the house from drowning. That Donnie came by for no reason with his moisture meter. It's encouragement in a discouraging situation, really. Plus I have a little miss who has been awesome through all this upheaval.


Can't beat that! Well. I guess having a healthy house without old and new water damage and smooth ceilings would beat that but I'll take my happy where I can get it.