16 years ago, part 3

The Clean Up

I think it was the next day when my sisters and I met my mom at the laundry. She had piles and piles of clothes and shoes for us, and it all needed to be washed before we could wear them.

They smelled really bad, and I had never smelled anything quite like it. As I think of it, I can remember the smell today.

We sent our clothes through the washing machines and dryers. The black smoke stains were difficult to get out. They still smelled dreadful, but something had happened to our clothes. They were brittle, and tore and broke with the slightest movement.

Thus ended our attempts to salvage our clothes. We went shopping instead. And we did a lot of shopping after that for months and months, but not just for clothes. The house was deemed repairable, and my parents needed to shop for new furniture, new upholstery, new window treatments, new wallpaper, new carpet, new millwork, new appliances, new counter-tops and cabinets and plumbing and more.

Eventually, we all came together in a house that was given to us to stay in while our house was being repaired. It was a 2 bedroom split-level house with an unfinished basement. My parents used one bedroom, and my siblings and I shared the other. My parents bought new mattresses, and we slept on them on the floor.

I remember my mom laboring and crying over lists for the insurance company, having to list EVERYTHING that they owned and give a dollar value to it. I remember going through our blackened house, having to decide what was salvageable and what needed to go into the dumpster. Clothes, stuffed animals, books, pictures that were on display, furniture in the kitchen (kitchen table & chairs) & my brother's room were all tossed into the dumpster. Anything made of paper or fabric were most affected by the smoke and needed to be thrown out.

The house was so black on the inside. Except for the broken windows and some smoke marks, it looked almost normal on the outside. My 3-year old brother soon refused to go into the house, calling it the "yucky house."

One night I remember driving by our home on the way to the rental house, and I thought I saw a light in the house for a moment as we drove by. I told my mom; we turned around and went into the black house. We could not see the light when we went inside, and we walked around to see if any of the lights had been left on. When we reached the front set of stairs and stood underneath the light bulb in the stairwell, I looked up and saw that it was on. The blackness absorbed all of the light so that we could not see it until we saw the bulb itself. It was very strange.

After all our belongings were removed from our home, workers came in and gutted it. All the newer sheetrock walls came down and the carpets and flooring thrown out. In the burned areas, they removed the walls and floor. I think ALL the structure of the walls were good and just the flat surfaces were removed. I don't remember if the walls in the unburned areas, which may have been plaster were taken down. But all the wallpaper was removed, and the entire house was wallpapered. Even the ceilings were wallpapered in some of the rooms. It was all very Victorian.

Then they repaired walls and floors and ceilings. They installed the new millwork, cabinets, appliances, wallpaper, and flooring. I remember the men who wallpapered were really good and fast, but they were there for days. Lots of wallpaper, I tell you! One of these men was very funny and would do back flips in our yard, which was so neat to me.

Everything had to be replaced as it was in the house, according to the Insurance policy. The cabinets and millwork looked EXACTLY the same as they had before, only my mom changed the colors.

I wanted my room to be have yellow wallpaper with pink carpet, and that's what my younger sister and I got (we shared a room). No, I would not choose this today.

Four months after the fire, we moved back into our home.

Some recent pictures of the house and answers to your questions to come.