I promised I’d share some more about our home renovation that we needed to do after the freeze. A couple of weeks ago I shared the before and after of my home office. I’m still loving the fact that I’m back in my home office after three, long months. It dawned on me that I need to do a post on navigating the insurance process, which I’ll do in the near future. But today, I thought it would be fun to share some of the other before and afters of our house. So, I’m going to show you my husband’s home office.
Repipe + Renovation
This little guy right there was the culprit that flooded my husband’s home office. If we back up a bit, the freeze happened Sunday evening. We woke up to snow on Monday morning. All was well, until the power went out. And, Monday afternoon, is when we realized my husband’s office was flooding from the ground up.
Thank God we were home because we caught it right away. I called our friend Mike – who is also our realtor, and he told us to shut the water off immediately. If were weren’t home, the damage would have spread to other rooms pretty quickly. Once the water was off, we tried to dry everything – and move any cords off the floor. We called our insurance company immediately, and they sent out water mitigation experts that evening. It wasn’t super helpful, because the power was out again by the time they arrived, so they couldn’t start with fans or anything else.
This is the water damage that was done to the floor. You can see where it’s bubbling up from water damage. So, we knew right away that the floors in Aaron’s office would need to be replaced.
The plumber came out later that week to fix the initial leak. And, that was the initial hole he cut. However, once the power came back on and the water mitigation experts could come do their job, they did a flood cut on our walls.
Water mitigation experts
For those wondering, our insurance company used Stanley Steemer as our water mitigation experts, and they were fantastic. They were professional, kind and they did a good job under some pretty challenging circumstances. They cut the drywall that possibly got wet when the floor flooded, which you can see in the picture above. Then, they went ahead and removed all of the wet flooring in that room.
And those big fans you see up there? They stuck those in my husband’s office with the door closed for about three days to dry everything out. Once the three days was up, they came back to grab the fans. Our insurance company covered all of their expenses.
Home office renovation to-do list
So, right away, we knew we needed new sheetrock and drywall, new paint, new flooring, new pipes, new insulation and new baseboards! And that was just one room. You can read about our re-pipe here. Our contractor came in and re-insulated everything at the end, and our plumber insulated the pipes from the outside – and replaced all the external fixtures with copper.
Aaron actually picked out the flooring, and I love it. I need to have a moment here to talk about how much I love the floor color. It’s Montrose Oak, and it really changed the dynamic of our house. Now, I didn’t love the original floor colors when we moved in, but they were fine for awhile. But, since we were redoing the floors in Aaron’s office, we decided to go ahead and put new flooring in all four of our bedrooms. Best decision ever. It was a hassle to move all of the furniture, but I’m so glad we stuck it out.
And, here’s the flooring while they were installing it. They installed the flooring in this room before they did the drywall in this room. Baseboards and paint were done last.
And, those are our. new pups on the new floors. The color is just gorgeous – and it hides a bit of dog fur as well. And, in our household, that’s a big deal. Because the crew completely redid the underlay as well, the floors are also much less noisy than the other ones!
Here is the finished product. Four walls, new office furniture, new flooring, new paint and new baseboards. It’s a whole new office, ya’ll. (He’s got so many computer screens because he does a whole lot of auctioning on them). Now, Aaron has a space that he’s proud of. Bonus: it’s kind of like a completely new office space for him!
