Just shy of three months ago the tank on our hot water heater gave out and flooded our basement with hundreds of gallons of water, maybe thousands, it’s hard to tell. It was 3-4 inches deep across our entire basement and it took us seven hours to shop vac it all up. And yep, I realize that this is the adult version of a toddler awkwardly holding up “this many” fingers. Making it even more fun was the fact that the valve that fed the water heater wouldn’t close all the way, so it continued to leak slowly even after we thought we turned it off. Water kept seeping out all night long and all we could do the next morning is clean up another flood and turn off the water to the entire house, waiting for every drop from the hot lines to come trickling out.
As this was my first significant disaster as a homeowner, there are things I didn’t know that I do now. Call ServePro before you clean it up, not after. It turns out that’s their job and insurance pays for it and I pay for insurance. So I basically paid someone else and did their job for them. ServePro, you’re welcome.
We did the insurance/contractor/insurance/contractor thing, sometimes acting as a marriage counselor and other times as a divorce lawyer. At some point in the process and for no reason shared with us, the contractor dropped off the map. We hadn’t paid him yet, so it wasn’t a big loss for us, but it meant finding another contractor and starting the process over… something we are still trying to figure out with insurance, but whatever. That’s apparently how this stuff works. So we were four and a half weeks into the debacle and starting over.
In our quest to just get back to “normal” already I googled contractors, I did a Facebook recommendations thing, and then I finally gave in and used one of the online service provider apps that basically cattle calls anybody and everybody with your job. As it turns out, a new contractor called me back within minutes. Three did, actually, but the other two don’t matter to the story at this point. The first guy to call showed up the same night to look everything over and we had a new estimate in hand 24 hours later. He started work three days after that. Henry and co. are absolutely great and I will highly recommend him just as soon as we are done with them. I’ll recommend him even though his estimate came back about 25% higher and we still don’t know if insurance is going to pay the difference. That’s how bad we want our basement back.
And this is where this gets really good, at least in my opinion, but we need a short detour first.
In other news, I work in a place that really wants its “normal” back. It’s got good people with good hearts who are genuinely trying to do good things. The past fifteen months have taken a toll on a lot of people and places and our workplace is no different. I cannot tell you how many times in the past few months I’ve heard people say something along the lines of “Can’t we just get back to normal?” Sometimes they’re polite about it and add “please.” Other times… well, there are other times. It’s been hard. We’ve adapted in some situations, more by necessity than opportunity, but we’ve managed to make do in most cases. People just want to get back to “normal” and that drive is understandable. It’s popular. But it can also be paralyzing. It turns out holding on to normal just doesn’t leave much room for growth.
Back to the basement, I get it. I just want my “normal” back, too. Except it’s not going to happen. As we walked through the disaster-area/basement, Henry pointed out several code violations in the ways the walls and electrical had been done. There was rotted wood within the damaged walls that had been rotting a long time. There were mold and mildew stains, all from internal damage over ten, twenty, thirty years. The earlier contractor’s estimate was to cover this all up again, replacing a minimum and repairing the walls. Henry said, “You need new walls.” His estimate included demolition and further clean-up, new walls built to code instead of sideways 2×4’s nailed through plastic wrap to the concrete foundation. He was going to insulate them and run new electric, running the lines well above the ground instead of along the footers. Basically, Henry was committed to doing it right.
That’s not the lesson. It’s a tad too cliché. Stay with me.
In this case, doing it right means that the rooms would be a bit smaller because the walls were going to be legal. It means the furnishings that we had in would need to be organized differently because even though it was only a few inches on each wall, they don’t all fit anymore. Right also means that the room will be warmer, because it’s insulated. Right means more attractive because we now have fantastic floors.
This past weekend, we “moved” back into those two rooms, mostly, and yesterday, Henry hung the last door for the repair job. He then promptly started another job, also in our basement… so whatever “normal” is, we’re still not there.
One of the many lessons we’ve learned through this, though, is that wanting “normal” back wasn’t the right wish or motivation. It turns out “normal” had a lot of issues and problems, most of which we hadn’t bothered looking for. Most of which were conveniently hidden and easy to ignore. But what we called normal isn’t a thing anymore and the boundaries have to move a bit on that. The definitions have to change and that means the experience will change, too. And we can harp on the way things were all we want, but it doesn’t matter. Before us now is the blank landscape of a new “normal.” Yes, it’s different. We are committed to making it better. We are invested in making it better. Normal is probably easier, but better is courageous.
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Expensive lessons, all the way around. Praying for the courageous choices, for you, for the Salvation Army, for the nation.