The not-so-wonderfully wet Christmas of 2011

All the stockings were hung...well um, laying pretty around the tree since there is no fireplace (who needs it when the average winter temps in southern AZ are around 56.) Any-who what a surprise we received that year, as we noticed a box in the garage that showed signs of water damage. GREAT!! Just what everyone wants this time of year. So after weeks of remediation, dry time, insurance squabbling and bare concrete...oh and let's not forget the field mouse that made it into the house, then the repairs...ah finally we could get back to normal. I have to admit it was odd to me that the whole thing seemed to take so incredibly long. 

Here was the big trouble maker

(I guess we should have paid attention to that, you can bet it won't ever happen again!)

This is what we found under the leaky trouble maker, unfortunately it had been leaking for a long time. 

After the remediation, pretty right? Then the covered the affected area with plastic and put really loud fans inside the plastic for a few days to dry it all up. That was AWESOME...not! Once the fans were gone one little critter found his way right into the house. But we caught him! Thank goodness it didn't take long, I would have never gotten to sleep that night. 

YAY!! Finally closing up the gaping hole!!

And finally back to normal walls!

Uh oh! May be normal walls but we lived with our chopped up carpet for months. This was our own decision. We were waiting to have laminate wood put in most of the house.