A Matter of Perspective
My house is naked!
So much has been happening over the past four months. As some of you may remember, the area where I live was hit by two tornadoes in about two weeks' time in May. First, was the small town where I live. The second one was in a neighboring town.
Now my house is naked! All of the siding has been stripped off.
The contractors had to strip off all the siding and shutters because the tornado and winds had thrown objects into the siding and every side of the house was damaged.
It seems rather fitting that May 13 was a Friday this year. It was the day after an F1 tornado spun around my neighborhood and took out 8 of the 10 trees in my yard along with dropping three huge trees onto my house. Only one of them actually broke through the ceiling into an upstairs bedroom.
It was a pretty wild night, though, on May 12.
We heard the tornado warnings on our phones and on Alexa before the power went out.
We were barely down the stairs to the basement when we could hear crashing all around us. When it was all clear we had trees on our house, water pouring into the upstairs, and hundreds of little things that were damaged or missing.
The next morning it was a little easier to see what the damage was! The uprooted tree that actually went through the roof was a very large mature tree. These all were some pretty big trees and at this point, three of them were on my house!
We were not the only ones to have damage and getting someone to help us was difficult because everyone was busy.
It took us almost three months to get a contractor who was less busy and could evaluate the house and start the work for us.
As you know, we live in Minnesota and fall is well upon us. With a tarp-covered hole in our roof, we need the work to get done soon or we will have snow coming into the house!
My granddaughter’s room had to be totally gutted. What a mess! But the work crew did a great job!
It had to be totally stripped because all the plaster and lathe and whatever it is that holds up a ceiling was lying on her floor or sagging down toward the floor. They also needed to see how many of the rafters were broken or damaged on this side of the house as two trees had fallen on her room. (This is probably the cleanest her room has ever been!!!)
It was a scary night but in the light of day things looked “better.” We could actually see what had to be done and at least what the external damage was.
Now that they have begun the work, they are able to see how many rafters were damaged. They can better judge the extent of the work needed to fix the house. The estimate was $42,000. Thank goodness for insurance!
They also have to rip out all the carpet and do extensive work on the bathroom as the wall there was damaged by the trees also and we have mold issues now.
The point of all this is just that things can be messy in our lives. We might be working along and then a “storm” comes. We deal with the damage but sometimes it takes a while before things are “back to normal.” Some things may never return to “normal.”
That isn’t always a bad thing, though. We can see things more clearly now and fix things that may have been wrong before.
It isn’t something that we want to have to do but once we start fixing it, we can maybe make things better than they were before. We can always try anyway!