The Hardest Part is Done!

Since the fire, everyone involved from the insurance people, cleaners, contractors and more have told us that the hardest part is tearing down the house and getting the smoke smell out.  As of today, Friday, June 10th, we are done with the tear down and cleaning process.  It only took 76 days!!

Here is what the inside of the house looks like now...

For the past three weeks, they have been cleaning and sealing our wood.

The dark wood is what everything looked like. They then sprayed a cleaner onto the wood and let it soak in.
After it soaked in, they scrubbed each piece of wood by hand. They ended up doing this twice!

After all the wood was cleaned, they sealed the wood with a white (paint) primer.
Anything white has now been sealed.

The contractor told us that if you ever go to "redo" your house or remodel and see white wood....
you know there had been a fire there at some point!

So this is what the entire house now looks like!  Cleaned...sealed...and white!  It is amazing how much difference the white wood makes.  When the wood was so dark and dingy, it still felt like a fire.  Now it feels like we've moved onto the rebuilding stage.  I stopped by the house last Thursday and then men who had been doing the sealing were finishing up.  He was very eager to tell me what a great job he had done and that he felt like our house was one of his top three.  He said it took a lot of work, but they were amazed at the turnout!  The smell is completely gone.  It really is amazing!

We also have a new roof now!  It was the first decision we had to make and we like the outcome!

The shingles still on the garage are the old ones.  The new color is already on the rest of the house!

Our completed new roof (and our new friend, the dumpster)!

New shingles, new gutters... looking good!

On Wednesday, Mark and I spent 2 hours at the house with the contractor and electrician.  Since our house was 50+ years old, we are having to redo ALL of the wiring and electric stuff because it was not to code.  This is the main expense that insurance will not cover.  It is going to cost us around $5000-$6000 to do this.  We have some extra money in our budget from insurance and some will come out of pocket, but it will be nice to know it is up to code and new.  Part of this new code is to have an outlet every 6 feet of wall space, so we'll end up with A LOT more outlets!  We also got to choose where we wanted light switches, lights fixtures, and fans.  We really liked the electrician and felt like he had really thought through a lot of this!  He had great ideas and was willing to share them with us.

Next we have big decisions to make about the bathroom and kitchen!  Should be fun!!