making lemonade

We were in Telluride when The Flood came. Some friends took refuge at our house after being trapped in their Lyons home for 4 days and subsequently saved us from imminent severe damage. They spent 24 round-the-clock hours bailing water out of our basement so that there was only relatively minimal damage. We still haven't replaced the flooring where the carpet was ripped up + my husband spent the better part of 3 weekends replacing moldy drywall by watching how-to videos on YouTube. But we fared much better than many. We were very lucky.

That was in September. This weekend my in-laws came down from the mountains so that my father-in-law could help with the demo. A is doing it himself, partly to save money and partly, I think, because it's sort of fun and pretty gratifying. Plus he got new tools. So they demoed the plumbing, counter tops and vanities in the two bathrooms upstairs. It was hard work, but they had fun and were feeling very satisfied with their accomplishment. Looks good, right?

They went back the next day to finish up and... it was raining from the master bath down two levels into the family room and basement. Yep. My reaction wasn't becoming of a lady... I'm sure we're not the first DIYers to screw a valve a bit too far, but it was pretty shocking to discover.
A BFF who's basement had severe flooding in September (and knows just about everything about everything...) came over to help mitigate the damage. Fortunately we were ripping out the yuck carpet anyway, but weren't really planning on replacing half the ceiling...

In the end, it's really no biggie. Our contractor was compassionate and didn't laugh at us. He loaned us some fans and buckets to help dry the place out. So while the men hauled away drywall and drenched carpet, the boys and I enjoyed an absolutely spectacular sunny day. There was just a little patch of snow left so they used the $.99 hardware store buckets the contractor gave us to make our new foundation. When life gives you lemons, right? xo