Flood 2017

I really don’t know where to start with this… Matt and I are not people to ask for help financially , we have worked our entire adult lives to become financially independent, (almost) debt free, and I know there are many other people right now far worse off than us, but many of my friends and family members have encouraged me to start a Go Fund Me campaign.As all of you know, Hurricane Harvey was devastating and has destroyed 100s of thousands of houses along the Gulf Coast, and ours was one of them. We had about 2 and 1/2 feet of water in our home. We were able to save most of our personal belongings like clothes, pictures, some of the kids toys and a few other important items but we lost almost all of our furniture and household items. When I look at the large pile of "trash" on our front lawn I see memories in my kids toys, fun times in all our camping gear, I see our home in disarray and it saddens me and makes me mad.

At times, I think, "why us God?" But then I think back to that night as the waters from Harvey were rising around our home and WE GOT OUT. I thank God that we were not stranded in our one story home as 2 feet of water started filling our house. I can only imagine sitting on our bed with a 7 week old, a 3 year old and 2 dogs trying to stay dry. SO as bad as this all is, I thank God we got out before the waters entered our home.

Since we do not have flood insurance the cost to rebuild is completely on our own, yes there is FEMA but we all know how the government is when it comes to aid, I assume we will get a few thousand dollars from them. Also, our church has mentioned they will help us however they can, which they already have. Our church as well as members of my team from work and friends came to our house over the course of 4 days and helped us clean and demo our house. They also fed us and made sure our immediate needs were met and we are forever grateful for everything that has been done for us.

Now that the demo is done we have to start rebuilding, when I think of the financial impact this will have on us it just makes me sick, we have built up a small nest egg that we will use to help pay for this but it is just not enough. If there is anything you can do to help us raise some funds we would really apricate it.

To give you an idea of how much this is all going to cost I broke out some of the expenses. Some of these are actual quotes from contractors, others are estimates from Google searches for household items, but the total cost even with getting discounted work is about $50,000, and this is conservative.

$10,000 - Furniture; beds, mattresses, couch, tables, sheets, towels, curtains, 2 desks, dressers, crib…etc.
$14,000 - Walls, baseboards, doors, paint
$10,000 - kitchen & bathroom cabinets & countertops
$3,400 - electrician
$4,000 - appliances
$10,000 - flooring
 
Our goal is to be back in our house by Christmas, we would love to be home so our children can open a few presents in their home, to accomplish this goal we have to move very fast. The first round of contractors are set to start in the next 2 weeks. We are praying for supernatural speed with contractors, prices to low, items to be free and FEMA to be generouse. If you cannot give please pray! 

Thank You, 
Shelly

Here are some photos of our house. 

The first time Matt got to go back home, the water level had already gone down some, but you can see it was still inside the house. 

Water line on the garage

Water level at the back door

Living room, sorry it is fuzzy but you can see that eveything was thrown around the room from the flood waters. 

David's room, you can see the floor is buckeling up

David's toys and books, we moved everthing off the bottom shelf, but the waters came higher and we lost all the books and toys on the 2nd shelf. 

Cabinets 

Flood water highth inside the house 

Durring demo

The "trash" pile on our lawn 

After demo