We Survived Hurricane Irene!

Sorry I have been offline and not able to post. A a tree went down across the creek at a neighbor's house took out the power, the phone, TV cable and worse of all, the Internet. Rather than fix the outage, Dominion Power just shut down the circuit leaving us without power since a little after 12:00 Noon on Saturday. I've put off getting a new phone, so I've had no way to readily get online. We still have no power and are using a generator (like the one at right) to keep the refrigerators and some lights and fans running. Not having A/C is a bitch!! Fortunately, we have a gas hot water heater and a gas cook top stove.

We fared OK overall. We had 3-4 inches of water in the first floor, but since we had redone the first floor to be water proof, all we had to do is mop off the base boards (made of a composite material but looks like traditional wood trim work) and marble floors that are throughout the first floor (even in the laundry room and pantry closets). We had carried all the furniture upstairs of put it up on tables or saw horses. Our flood doors helped to significantly reduce the amount of water that made it into the house and we learned that some of the leakage comes from where the cinder block walls hit the slab foundation. We'll investigate whether or not there's a way top apply some kind of water proof sealant like we've seen on HGTV (the boyfriend's favorite channel).

The yard was a huge mess, but we hired a local kid who worked his but off and things look presentable again although we still have some limbs on the bank of the creek to cut up at some point. An ornamental cherry tree blew over as well, but the roots did not tear and we - with the help of several other guys - got it back up and staked back in place. Hopefully it survives. There are mounds of limbs and debris along much of the street where neighbors have been busy cleaning up as well. The photos below from the Daily Press give an idea of some of the tree damage in our neighborhood. Since our street runs right along Hampton Roads harbor, we got whipped by the wind in both directions as Irene went up the coast.