The House: The Good, The Great, and...The Fire

For the last few weeks I've been meaning to do a post with before and after pictures of the house and all the work Kody has done over the past year.  I don't have as many pictures as I'd like, but oh well.

 

Then again last Friday I said to Kody I needed to download all the pictures from his phone to do this post, and on Saturday we had the fire. So.....here it is, better late than never, and with a heavy heart for having all of Kody's time and effort go up in flames. :(

 

This was the back porch last summer

 

 

Removing the porch

 

This is the new back porch and side porch. These survived the fire and are still standing! YAY!

 

 

This is the start of the front porch. And don't you love the wood gables up around the windows? They're way better then the red and green slats that were there before!

 

During the winter of 2013-2014, Kody did the entire tear out of the house, laid the foundation in the basement, and did 90% of all the framing. Here's the link to the post of all the tear out pictures. Let's just say that tearing out lath and plaster from a 100 year old house is A LOT of work!

Tearing Out: http://thecolliertimes.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-remodel.html



Tear Out Pictures

Here is Kody pouring the concrete in the basement when it was only about 40 degrees :) He had to come back every 3 hours throughout the night to smooth it over again and again as it would settle.

 

Here is the start of the reroof. Thankfully the roof survived the fire too

 

 

Kody busted out an area in the dining room where 2 windows were to install French doors that leads out to the side porch

 

Framing the farm house was quite the process! It wasn't like starting from the ground up and framing a whole wall and lifting it up.  Since we kept most of the existing walls, each board that was framed had to be to exact scale to match the already existing wall it was going on. That probably sounds confusing, but if you saw the work, you'd understand and know how much time it took. 

 

The previous stairs that led from the main floor to the upper story went straight down and were kind of steep

 

 

Now they turn and are way more manageable.

 

Starting the insulation

 

 

It was really exciting to see the drywall up! Finally looked like it was liveable. You can also see what the original wood floors looked like. Previous people who had lived there had rugs in the center of the room and painted around the edges. It was not very pretty looking. :)

 

This is what the wood floors looked like after being refinished. Beautiful! (Minus the dust on the floor :) )

 

 

This is the kitchen and originally it had a wall running right through the middle of it. Kody took that out.

 

This is the dining room with the beautiful French doors Kody put in.

 

 

 It took Kody 2 full days just to tape off for painting

 

We chose a nutural light tan color for the paint

 

The cabinets were beautiful! Custom made!

 

For those who know Kody, know that he puts his whole self into his work. He does not cut corners, or do any kind of job that is "ok." All of his work and projects are "Great," down to every nut and bolt. He purposefully chooses to do work the "hard way," because that is the way that things last and function the best. He has always been about quality. So when the fire happened, it was truly heart breaking, especially for Kody because he had lost all the work he had done with his own two hands.

 

Here's the story of the fire....

 

On Saturday morning, April 11th, Kody headed to work like he does every day. He fed the animals and then went to work on the house. He had spent the last week or so refinishing the wood floors. It's a process of sanding then varnishing, sanding then varnishing, sanding then varnishing, etc. He spent all that morning cleaning up the whole house. There was saw dust and residue all over from the sanding, and the flooring guys were scheduled to come in 2 days to start laying the vinyl floor, so Kody got the house all cleaned up. It actually looked quite nice. :) He had taken out most of his tools, and all the trash, garbage, etc. The only things left in the house were a sander, air compressor, a couple of saws, the shop vac, an empty trash can, and sealed cans of varnish.

 

Kody left at about 11:30am to go into town to get more sand paper and some other things. He was heading back to the farm at about 1:30pm. As he was driving on the highway, a fire truck pulled out and was directly in front of him. As he was pulling into Deer Park (along with the fire truck) the neighbor called Kody and said, "The house is on fire." That's when Kody knew exactly where the fire truck was going, and he followed it directly to the farm.

A person driving by was the first to call 911 to report the fire. They also recieved a couple other calls from the neighbors. When Kody pulled up to the house there were already 3 fire trucks there. We had crews from Deer Park, Riverside, and Chattory. There was a total of 15 response vehicles that showed, and a total of about 20 firefighters. They would take turns and rotate going into the house to extinguish the fire. 

 

The kids and I were at home and my friend sent me a text at about 2pm and said, "Are you guys ok?" I responded with, "Yes. Why?" She then said, "There is a fire by your farm. I thought it might of been yours." My first thought was that Kody was doing a big burn pile. But the wind had been blowing like 30+mph that day and I knew Kody was smarter then to do a burn pile on a windy day. So I called Kody to see what was going on. The second he said hello, I knew there was a problem. His tone of voice and the way he said it was clear that something was going on. I asked him right away, "Are you ok?" His response of, "Umm, no," was heavy and with a shaky voice. I said, "Do you want us to come down?" He replied with, "Yes."

 

At that point I had no idea what was happening, but because of the text from my friend I figured it was a descent size fire. Our friends don't live that far from the farm and they saw the smoke, so that's why she texted me. It had been a pretty lazy day because a few of us had been sick and weren't feeling super great. After I hung up the phone with Kody, I jumped up and told everyone to get their shoes on right away. There was some hemming and hawing, but I said, "We have to go to the farm and help dad, there's been a fire." After that we were all in the car in less then 2 minutes.

 

We said a prayer on the way to the farm. Driving the 5 miles seemed like it took a lot longer time. I can neither confirm nor deny that I was speeding. :) I then slowed down because I thought how horrible it would be to get in a wreck on a way to a wreck. My thoughts were all over the place. I prayed for Kody's continued safety and knew he was physically ok, because he had answered the phone when I called. My next thought was "please don't let it be the house."

 

As we pulled up there were already emergency responders directing traffic because fire trucks were taking up the road.

 

This was the first sight

 

 

 

 

I parked near the road, told the kids to stay in the car, and ran over to Kody. We just hugged and cried for a few minutes. I started asking questions of what happened, how did it start, etc? For the next several days the answers to all those questions was "I don't know."

 

Here is a short video I took

 

 

Here is the dining room

 

The cabinets in the kitchen

 

 

The front porch

 

The living room on the main floor got it the worst. The fire had burned several small holes through the wood floor. You could look down directly into the basement. It probably burned hot and fast in the living room because of the fumes from varnishing the wood floors. 



 

Nothing was physically burned on the upper story or the basement. Just lots of smoke and heat damage.

One of the upstairs bedrooms. 

 

 

All of the windows in the whole house were either blown out, cracked, or glazed over from the heat and smoke.  

 

 

It was completely heart wrenching to watch Kody stand there with tears coming down his cheeks. There was nothing he could do. He was totally helpless. All he kept saying was "Dang it. All that work and time. Dang it. A whole year wasted." I think it's one thing to loose stuff or things that can be replaced, but to loose time is a lot more difficult, because you can never get it back. And to see something that you've created and built with your own two hands just be gone in an instant, is pretty difficult to swallow.

 

We are very thankful that we had not started moving anything in yet. We're also very thankful that Kody was not there when the fire started. Knowing him, he would have grabbed the garden hose and done whatever he could have to put it out, and it could have been more devastating.

 

Kody had called John (our employer) right away, and he and his wife came out. It took a couple hours to get the clearance for us to even walk through the house once the fire crews were out. Even with all the wind and the windows blown out, and the chilly day it was, just stepping in the house you could feel the heat. It was really warm inside.

 

The fire crews ended up being there for about 6 hours.  There was nothing we could really do, so the kids and I headed home. Kody came home about 2 hours later. That first night was rough. More tears, very little sleep, thoughts of how, why, when, what next, etc. 

 

It wasn't until a few days later that we got the biggest question answered. How did the fire start? The investigator who came out to the house said it was an electrical wire that ran to the heating unit. All the wiring and everything is brand new, only a few months old. And we had an contracted electrician do all the wiring, so we still don't know if it was a faulty wire or if it was not installed correctly, or what. Still lots of questions that we don't have answers to, but hopefully time will tell.

 

We still have not been able to go in and start cleaning up anything. We're waiting for approval from the insurance. We don't know exactly how this process will go, but we hope and pray it will be fairly quick and smooth. The rebuild has already been decided, but the work will all be hired out. It is now time for Kody to be working outside with the gardens and animals, so if he were to do the work on the house himself again, he wouldn't be able to work on it until this winter. We should be able to move in sometime this year which will be nice. But it's really a bummer that we won't be able to enjoy all the custom, crafty work that Kody had done.

 

We had nearly 3,000 starts of tomatoes, peppers, and onions in the basement. They had been growing for 2 months. They did not get burned, but all the heat and smoke damage killed all the plants. That was the next biggest thing Kody was disappointed about. Just last week he replanted with 600 starts.

 

We are thankful for all the people who have reached out with kind words, love, and encouragement. We've had lots of offers to help clean up and do whatever is needed, and we hope to put those offers to good use soon :)  

 

Farming is a lifestyle we are so thankful to have and enjoy. We don't do it for money or prestige or to get gain. We want to live a simple, self-sustaining lifestyle. We are so thankful for the opportunity we have to be living where we are and doing what we're doing. It is truly our "happy place,"  even amongst the hiccups that happen along the way! :)