It has been some time since adding to what is surely a shortage of random online writing. It’s now been ten months since Hurricane Michael cut a path right through our literal backyard. The longer it has been, the more we come to realize how fortunate we as a family have been in the relatively limited damage we sustained considering that the western eyewall of the storm was directly over our house. I’m not going to lie, I miss the old oak trees and shady roads that characterized our neighborhood and, even now, it seems hard to adjust to the idea that no amount of recovery work is going to make things the way they once were. Nevertheless, instead of dwelling on what used to be, we’re happy to look ahead now that we have mostly finished restoring our home.
Happily, the damage we sustained has been almost entirely repairable by our own work. All those hours as a kid learning to build have all paid off. Aside from the reshingle work on the main house and a small amount of yard regrading, we’ve been able to take on the work ourselves. As an added bonus, being a professional civil engineer has also meant that I can design, permit, and certify my own work. All told, being accidentally self-sufficient has saved us no small amount of money and time!
I stood in the backyard a few evenings ago and looked around at all that we’ve managed to put back together as a family. In less than a year we’ve managed to:
- Remove debris from three large oak trees, one garage, the fence, and part of the roof;
- Rebuild one corner of our house roof;
- Redo the sheetrock in the boys room;
- Replace two broken windows in my old office;
- Rebuild about 350 feet of privacy fence;
- Reroof the tool shed;
- Design, permit, and build a garage/office;
- Build a new kids play fort; and,
- Redo the old office to be our new nursery
It’s also fun to think about how much work goes into just one line item such as “rebuild garage”! It starts with a blank concrete slab to which a pile of sticks is steadily assembled into a frame, to which anchor wedges are drilled, to which roof trusses are added, followed by sheathing, followed by tie-rods, followed by blocking, followed by roof underlayment, followed by shingles, followed by ridge venting, followed by house wrap, followed by window installation, followed by siding, followed by door installation, followed by trim, followed by rough electrical, followed by insulation, followed by sheetrock installation, followed by mudding, followed by interior trim, followed by painting, followed by trim, final electrical, lighting, flooring, and finally moving everything in… And, as we spend our last few days as a family of five before welcoming Harper, I’m excited to call it done. I finally feel like we’re past “recovery” projects and back on to regular projects just in time to enter the exceedingly tiring work of newborn baby-ing!
Back to “normal”!
So, now that those projects are out of the way, I’m pretty excited to be working on a triathlon game plan for 2020 that hopefully includes some local races, some 70.3 events, maybe some cycling specific races, and just enough running to feel like a “runner”. For now, I’m cranking the treadmill back up in an effort to escape these ridiculous temperatures 🙂
John Fielding 