An overly warm welcome home

After a great flight home on Monday, when Cora was an angel for 10 of the 10 1/2 hours, we returned to find greasy soot covering every inch of the interior of our house.

My parents went by our house Saturday evening to feed Somer, and discovered the after-effects of an electrical fire in the spare bathroom, somehow sparked by a broken extractor fan. The air-conditioning system sent the smoke and soot throughout the house. Thank God, not much actually caught alight, or we obviously could have lost the house, and our dear Somer. She survived the smoke and is a bit sooty, but otherwise OK.

We left our London hotel (where we stayed one night before flying home) to move into another hotel in SClarita. And today, we're moving hotels because the one we checked into is fully booked from today through the weekend. We'll be out of the house for at least a week, maybe longer, depending on how long it takes the restoration cleaners to do their thing. Then will start construction on the spare bathroom.

On Tuesday, a dry cleaning company came and removed every item of clothing and linen from the house - including everything in the drawers and closets, because of the smell. We also met with the cleaning company, which is the company who cleaned the Pentagon after 9/11, and a contractor for the bathroom repair work, along with the insurance adjuster.

Just like when I had my car accident, I am looking at this experience from a grateful perspective. The Lord has protected us again - the firefighters who responded to my parents' call said we are super fortunate the house didn't go up. If there had been attic insulation near the fan, it probably would have. And we know how glad we are that Somer is OK! This is an inconvenience to be sure, but that is all. And our bathroom remodel will be done a bit sooner than it would have been! Our homeowners' insurance is coming through to cover what we need, so we should be out very little out-of-pocket.

It's a bit surreal walking around the house; in most of the rooms, you don't notice the soot, until you move an item and see the color difference underneath it. Even in our silverware drawer, when you open it and lift a spoon, you can see the soot. The smell of smoke is really strong in the spare bathroom and in the back bedrooms.

I'm meeting the electrician this afternoon to get the house OK'd to put the power back on. Then the cleanup work will start tomorrow, when we'll meet with another contractor to get a second estimate.

We'll keep you all posted on the progress.