My Crazy, WONDERFUL Life! : When it rains, it pours....Old houses SUCK

I love my house but sometimes old houses SUCK!

When I first bought the house, it was mostly for the land and the barn. I LOVE living on main street in Farmington and having 2.37 acres is so nice. The house is just ok. It has never been anything special.
I love it but it has low ceilings, narrow hallways, small windows and a million little quirks.
It has 3 kitchens, why? no idea. It really isn't that functional of a floor plan.
I have always thought that I would build a nice, new house in the back, maybe rent this house but now I think once I build a new house I am going to bulldoze this one and enjoy it.

Because of how life was the last 9 years, I have been repairing my walls, windows, and doors for the last few months. It feels really good to change these things that have been broken or damaged.
It has been healing to do the work myself too...(mostly)...
I have taken out trim in my bedroom, repaired holes in the walls and almost have it ready to be painted. I am changing out all the doors upstairs, most of them are broken anyway. I am going to paint my brown wood trim in my bedroom white.
My awesome neighbor replaced 2 of the windows in my bedroom. I have new blinds to go up once I paint.
I have repaired all of the dings and dents in my hallway and 2cnd bathroom on the main level.
I am planning on replacing the carpet in the front room and my bedroom too.

I wasn't going to do much to the basement for now, having had 4 kids down there and 2 BIG boys it needs a lot of work but I figured I would leave that for another day.
2 weeks ago my plumbing decided to change my plans for the basement. My water and SEWER backed up and completely flooded my basement. I am amazed at how much of the basement was flooded, I didn't realize how bad it was or how much work it would be. I was just going to rip the carpet and pergo flooring out myself until a friend told me I was crazy and that I should call my home owners insurance.
I did, they sent out the disaster cleanup guys....I can't believe everything they tore out of my basement.
Carpet out of 2 of the 3 bedrooms, the carpet in the hallway, the pergo flooring in one of the kitchens, half of the cabinets in my Big kitchen, the sink, dishwasher, the cabinets in the bathroom, the wood trim on the walls, and cut the Sheetrock up 2.5' everywhere down there and it broke my clothes washer.
Thank heavens for good friends that are willing to let me borrow their clothes washers until I got a new one. Which I LOVE!

The fridge in my kitchen upstairs broke about a week before the basement flooded so I had been using the basement fridge.
I had plans to switch fridges with a friend, He wanted a smaller older fridge for his garage. He had a nice stainless one out there that was too big for the space he wanted to put it in.
Then the basement flooded so we had to move the fridge I was using out of the kitchen down there. I was without a fridge for over a week while they worked on the basement and I could coordinate help to move my basement fridge to Ron's house and get his fridge.

FINALLY last week we were able to make the switch....So grateful for the help people gave me in moving the old one out into the garage and switching the others. YAY I have a fridge upstairs in my kitchen.

My poor garage was so filled with the old/ruined cabinets from the basement, a fridge that doesn't work and a myriad of other things that I have taken out of the house. I had a credit with a company called Junk Jr. so decided to call them and have them take the rest of the cabinets out of the basement kitchen, the lockers out of the garage. They did this and took all the lockers out of my garage. It looks so much better. I still have a pile of things that belong to Joey and am hoping to get rid of those in the next week or so.

It was stressful and I was kind of bummed at first on the basement flood but now I am excited. I get to redo, change and fix the basement now. I am excited to change things down there that I never would have if this hadn't happened.
I heard back from the insurance company and I am VERY pleased with the amount they are giving me for the repairs.

It will be fun to do a lot of the work myself too. I am so grateful for friends that I know will be helping me and a wonderful Dad that always taught me how to repair and replace things myself.
I have been making phone calls this last week to get contractors in here to help with the things I can't do.

Here are the pictures of the ruined basement. I will post more when I get it redone.