When Lightning Strikes

Remember how I mentioned the lightning strike that decided to play a little prank on us just six weeks after we moved in to our new house? In one instant, lightning struck the house, caused a fire and a water leak, and zapped most everything that runs on electricity. {No people or pets were hurt in the fire, thankfully. It's just stuff. Still, it's our stuff...}

Six weeks later, we're still trying to get the house put back together. You know, with everything working. No holes in the walls. No charred parts.

Nevermind the new-house decorating! It's not even on my radar right now. For us, now, progress means simply having things working and looking they way they did on the day we moved in.

So, imagine my delight when my husband came across this little gem last weekend. It's a bottle of Coup de Foudre.

Know what coup de foudre means? I didn't either.

It means "when lightning strikes." Oh yeah, we had to drink this.

  

Yep. Says it right there on the label.

So, we invited our usual accomplices over to help us enjoy a bottle or six.

<clink clink> Here's to hoping lightning
never strikes again!

For those who are interested in an update, we really are on the road to recovery. The casualty list was ridiculously long. But most of the damaged pipes, cables, fixtures, and appliances have been repaired or replaced by now. We were fortunate to have had access to all the professionals who originally built this house just a few short months ago, so we immediately knew whom to call, and they already knew all the intimate details of what's hidden in the walls.

We have just a few things left to repair...

Our range, whose electronic parts now twitch like a nervous cat. Not to mention the persistent click it makes to remind us it's still there and still not working. I'm down to two working burners, from six. That's not horrific, but it is insufficient for most meals. And there are NO working ovens. This is hardest on the girls, who enjoy and miss their baked goodies!

It's difficult to capture the twitch and impossible to capture the
click in a still photo. But trust me, this range is fully personified.
Very creepy.

The vent cover, through which the flames emerged in their hunger for more oxygen and fuel. Instead, they were met by my husband and a bucket of water, thus extinguishing the flames before they could do much further damage. (My daughter and I walked in the door just in time to see flames and my husband approaching them with his bucket. That's when I realized that the smoke detector alarms were not a malfunction - this was a real situation.)

Thankfully, my husband was home at the time of
the lightning strike and was prepared to strike back.

The basement walls and ceilings that now indelicately reveal the the intimate details of our home. At least the firemen and, subsequently, the plumbers and electricians, made the best of the holes and cut out neat rectangles. They could have just hacked away indiscriminately, so we thank them for their tidiness.

This is just a sampling of our basement cut-outs.
Despite how this looks, there is good news here.
Yes, we had a wet basement. But upon examination,
the gas line had a hole in it from the lightning.
Turns out, the only thing that prevented the house
from bursting into flames once it punctured the
gas line was the fact that it first punctured the
copper plumbing pipe next to it, causing water to
shoot into the gas line (and elsewhere), and thus
diluting the gas. At the time, we didn't realize
the potential danger from within the walls.

There are yet a few other problems, which all seem minor compared with the past and outstanding damage.

And as we raise our coup de foudre to toast our good health, at least we have a funny story to tell about the summer we moved into a new house... Cheers! <clink clink>