McBrides Back On The Grid!

   Greetings! We are excited to share that our place is up and running with electricity! We've been having some pretty severe storms here in MN - and this past Friday evenings storm, left us - along with 500,000 other homes! - without power.
  The first night, Friday, was *kind of fun, like camping, with candles and flashlights. We came home at 11:30pm to a dark house (We had been at the annual Relay for Life event from the American Cancer Society, which had been moved indoors of course). I said "Well, at least we can watch a movie on the iPad - what's on Netflix?" Kevin reminded me that wiFi is required for Netflix, so that was a no-go. We were left with the only 3 movies we have loaded on the iPad right now: The Hunger Games, Pitch Perfect, and Harry Potter 7.1 - all pretty good options I suppose. It did the trick.
  The next morning, calling into the power company to see what was up, we learned that power was not expected to return to us until Monday. So! We figured we would pack up some clothes, the pups, and cooler full of fridge-goods for two nights and head to Kevin's Mom's place - fully powered and ready to cook yummy dinners for us! We are So fortunate to have family nearby. Most of our neighbors had to stick it out the whole time, and some of them didn't get power as early as we did!
  We were updated later to: no power until Wednesday. Yikes!! So back to the house for more works clothes and a cooler full of freezer-goods.
  We made it. Power came back earlier than promised: Monday night instead, and we moved back to the house last night (Tues.). Hooray!! We don't have any trees or huge branches down - which is a wonder. You can't drive a minute from our place without see HUGE trees down - some of them on fences or houses - including one of our neighbors whose gazebo has been flattened into a thousand pieces.

  Aside from having to toss most of our fridge goods, we are left with a seriously soggy basement... Downstairs, off of our family room, and into the laundry room, we are experiencing some wet carpet and wet-under-tile in the laundry room. So! Pull up the carpet, most of the linoleum tile and in come the industrial fans and dehumidifier to dry us up. And with this moisture, and a few days of no air movement and humidity while we were out of power, comes a pretty stinky stituation. [In more ways that one!] I would say that it smells like an armpit down there. Stinky-hockey-locker-room-armpit stink. Kevin is doing his best to get it aired out and disinfected :)

  Here's what it looks like right now:

Carpet pulled up and base trim removed so fans can dry underneath... All of bins of stuff that were being stashed in this area are all moved upstairs to a guest bedroom.

All of these industrial fans running nonstop will surely make up for us being out of power for 3.5 days....

   Removing the linoleum from the laundry room revealed a second level of tile made of asbestos. Nice. 

  The plan is that when we are all dried up, we will seal up the laundry room tile with a 2-part epoxy floor, re-stretch/re-install the carpet and have it down-and-dirty cleaned (hopefully we can get it cleaned up, smelling like roses, and not have to replace it) - will show the finished later on...

  In addition, we are shifting out backyard landscaping plans to the front, where will be regrading the yard to slope away from the house - more to come!!

  Wish us luck!