On Monday, December 9th, 2012 things changed at the apartment. It was a Monday morning and I drove down with my 4 year old who fell asleep on the drive. My mom, who usually watches him while
I work was not at home and so I took him with me to the apartment and since he was still asleep I decided to wait in the van until he woke up.
When I walked inside I knew something was wrong because I could hear water running. I walked around the corner and saw a fountain of water spraying up onto the ceiling. I was momentarily stunned into immobility. When I regained my sensibilities I ran to the basement to turn off the main water line. As I reached the basement I once again had to pause for a moment. The water was at least a foot deep. I pulled myself together and plunged through the COLD water to turn off the main water line and then began to assess the damage.
I called my parents to report what had happened and my mom headed right over to help me figure things out. The water in the basement hadn't drained because rags and building debris and floated over the floor drains.
I was emotionally devastated, we were getting close to being done on this remodel and I knew we now had so much to redo. I did the immediate cleanup that was needed and was glad to turn everything over to my dad to sort out at this point. In the beginning it was thought that the flooding was caused by a valve I replaced in the kitchen and did not get on tight enough, since water was shooting out from here. In my defense on the valve I did ask my dad to check the valve because I was pretty sure it wasn't tight enough, I do know how weak my arm strength is, but he told me he was sure it was OK. It turns out that due to the extreme cold front that we had in Denver over the weekend and the fact that no one had been in the apartment since I was there on Thursday, the heat was not turned up (we kept the temperature low unless we were actually working, because why heat an empty place?) and a pipe froze. The frozen pipe caused pressure to build up in the kitchen and so the weak valve I put on burst off and the disaster began. We estimate it was running for a little over 24 hours.
Now you can get a glimpse of my heart break.
Kitchen ceiling and wall. It doesn't look too bad from here but just wait.
This is what happened in the basement!
The dark tile on the bottom shows how Granite tile, even when it is sealed, will soak up water when it sits in it for more than 24 hours.
I did not take many before pictures but I will try to give you a glimpse of what we were working with. The prior renter had lived here about 25 years and the family had many different pets over the years. The one thing that can not be shown in pictures is the smell. Even weeks after we started pulling things out of the apartment when my Dad came in for the first time he commented on the smell and he can rarely smell anything.
**Most of these pictures were taken to show my Dad the condition of things and not with the intent of documenting this remodel. Do not judge my picture taking skills based on what you see here.
This is the bathroom on the main floor. It is located right across from the front door. All of the cabinets in the house were just like this. I't is hard to see but there are horizontal grooves in the doors. The counter top is a faux marble corian material. The original flooring is linoleum. We already took down the builder grade mirror that was in 3 sections on the wall. It gave very odd look to the room, who needs 2 skinny (about 6" wide) mirrors along the edge of your center mirror?
This is a close up of the cabinet doors. Yuck!! They just need to go or we need to do some major changes if we want this place to work.
No, it is not another view of the same room. This is the main bathroom on the upstairs floor. Notice the nice white medicine cabinet, it was donated to the restore after the remodel because it was a good item but it didn't fit the look we were going for.
Yes, the tub and tile were this gross! My dad originally wanted us to scrub and clean the big cast iron tub and then we talked him into changing it out. The tub did not look much better than the tile.
This is the master bedroom and bath in all its glory! I think the pictures speak for themselves. It was a lot to take in.
A few pictures of the wall and ceiling holes.
In all the years my parents have owned this property I have never walked past the kitchen and my dad has only been in there a few times. We knew we had a big job ahead of us we just didn't know how BIG!
