Relying on sweat equity

Friends, family help Michaels rebuild

By SUSAN LYNN
Register Editor

Register/Susan Lynn Tricia and Bruce Michael, shown here with their pet “Show Cat” will open their home Saturday as part of the Allen County Animal Rescue Facility’s annual Holiday Homes Tour.

Tricia and Bruce Michael weren’t home during the Flood of 2007. But they had all the reminders necessary of the historic event when they returned from a wedding in Virginia Beach to find the floors of their home “squishy.”
Though the water had receded from the 3-4 inches that had risen through the floors of their rural home northwest of Iola, it left behind water-soaked floorboards and carpet, Sheetrock and insulation.
The extent of the damage didn’t hit the Michaels immediately, partly be-cause family members had removed most of their valuables in the preceding days to the water’s crest on June 30. Also, other than a fine residue of silt left from the floodwaters, their home looked normal. Tricia admits a sense of denial as to how big of a job lay before them. Surely the hot summer sun would be enough to dry out the watersoaked underside of the house.
After two weeks, she faced facts. The oak floors in the living room had buckled, the kitchen floor tiles peeled up with ease and with a ruined air conditioning system, the heat, the smell and the flies pushed her over the edge. She drove into town to get a work bucket from the makeshift flood headquarters at The One. On the drive home, her cell phone rang. It was Ginny Hawk, asking if she needed help.
It’s partly because of Ginny’s call and the help of her husband, Bob Hawk, that Tricia and Bruce are participating in the Allen County Animal Rescue Facility’s Christmas Homes Tour this coming Saturday.
“I figured if this was important to them, I’d participate as a way of saying thank you,” Tricia said.

BRUCE AND TRICIA have lived in their home at 1570 1000 St. since 1984. They love the rural setting of their two acres and the space and quiet it affords. Their son Cody, 24, is still at home with them. He is employed at Colt Energy. Bruce is a sales consultant at Twin Motors. Tricia is a Title I teacher at Lincoln Elementary School. They also have a son Derek who proved invaluable during the first days of the flood while the other three were away.
“Derek had the foresight to start getting stuff out when the rains started,” Tricia said, of the heavy equipment stored in a garage and the manageable pieces of furniture in their house. She could tell with each phone conversation that the situation was worsening. “I could hear the worry in his voice,” she said. “I asked him to get the three dogs and the cat and go home.”
The Michaels estimate the waters from Deer Creek were in their house of 2,100 square feet for only five or six hours. Even so, it took more than five months to repair the damage.
Start with the floors. Carpet, tile and wood coverings had to be removed. Then to the walls. Sheetrock was cut two feet high around the circumference of the home behind which the water-soaked insulation was removed.
And of course to remove the floors and lower portion of walls most everything in the house had to be emptied. That’s when Colt Energy stepped to the plate and offered the Michaels use of a 10-foot by 30-foot box truck in which to store furniture and other belongings.
With the house no longer inhabitable, the Michaels split as a unit to go live with relatives; Tricia to her sister Phyllis Nelson, Bruce to his mother Marian Michael and Cody in with his brother Derek and his family.
For one solid month their schedules were to go to work each morning only to go to work at their home each night before returning to their temporary living conditions.
“I’d store my cleanup work clothes in the car and drive straight from school out to the house,” Tricia said of the routine. Son Cody would shortly join her from his job and work on the house until Bruce would come in the early evening with a takeout meal. From then they would work late into the evening re-installing insulation, cutting and hanging Sheetrock, laying fieldstone around the wood stove, painting and texturing the walls, cutting and installing wood trim and casing around each new wood door.
A side benefit — the work has honed Tricia’s skill with a miter saw, a Mother’s Day gift from her sons. The door trims merit more than a glance.

THE MICHAELS try to look at the experience philosophically.
“After 23 years in one place, you learn what you can live without,” Bruce said of the many things they lost to the flood, to which Tricia counters with the confession, “I’ll always be a pack rat.”
Like many of those hit by the flood the Michaels did most of the repair work themselves and relied heavily on the help of family and friends. That was the cost-efficient way to do things. But a deeper reason lay in Bruce’s feeling that that’s how things are done.
Right from the start, friends were there.
When the Michaels first drove out to see their home, Lindsey and Jared Hammond were at the corner to walk with them across the wet fields to get to the doorstep.
Vickie Vaugh spent hours with her former classmate Tricia wrapping her fine china in paper for it to be boxed and stored during the renovation.
Bruce’s brother, Jeff, and friend Mark Lynn, along with sons Cody and Derek, did all the heavy lifting.
When the waters started to rise, a work crew from Colt Energy came to secure the Michael’s propane tank to a telephone pole to ensure it wouldn’t be swept away by the swift waters.
Larry Robertson of Gas and Jackie Smith spent hours helping Cody and Tricia tear out the tile floors in the kitchen, bathroom and out to the back porch. “Larry even brought a trailer and hauled off all the tile and cement board,” Tricia said.
And then there were the strangers. The first group came from a church in Olathe. Volunteers took out the base cabinets in the kitchen, cut Sheetrock and helped Cody and Derek with heavy chores in the garage.
Next came a collection of men — some local, some from out of state and connected with a church — who helped Tricia pull up the oak hardwood in the living room and then hauled it off in a dump truck.
The Michaels are still in awe of everyone’s generosity during their time of need. “Without their help these tasks would have been daunting,” she said.

THEY HAVE been back in their home for almost a year now. Beautiful Brazilian mesquite floors replaced the oak in the family room. The kitchen is cheery with new countertops, flooring and walls. A new heating and cooling system ensures efficiencies. New carpets are spot-free.
After 20-plus years, the updates would have come sooner or later, they reason.
But not this way.
If they are flooded again?
“We’re out of here,” Tricia said.