Saturday Update---one week after Ike

We came home yesterday to take stock of the situation and attempt to come up with a plan. We found things much drier than when we left it last Sunday (thanks to the efforts of our neighbor and our landlord), but still pretty darn wet. We cleaned up a bit and tried to get a grasp on whether we could stay indefinitely or need to leave. Our landlord came by and gave us the update that he had roofers coming to get the new roof on early to mid next week and he had a sheetrock guy coming by Tuesday-ish to take a look at the water damage and see what the repairs would entail. Staying in the house was looking a bit iffy but we really didn't have anywhere to go that would keep us close enough by to keep the kids in school, and not interrupting that for them is a big priority. So we slept in our slightly stinky house last night not really knowing what would happen with Tuesday seeming like forever away, but needing it to roll around before we really had any answers. But our landlord called this morning and said he was on his way with an emergency water restoration guy to come and assess our damage. And while we were ecstatic that someone was available so soon to come by (our landlord has been amazing with moving things along) the news is not good. Where we thought that maybe half a dozen walls needed to come out, and a couple of ceilings...turns out about 90% of the walls of the house need to come out and almost ALL of the ceilings. It's going to be a major demo and a major reconstruction (but I just might get new counter tops as it looks like the hideous blue ones are outta here!). And since it's so wet and such a big project, we have to leave...for at least a month, maybe pushed to 8 weeks if it's tough getting the "put the walls back up" guys out here. So today we had to pseudo-pack our belongings so the little stuff was out of the way of the workers and get ready to be gone for a while. They start ripping out our sheet rock tomorrow am at 9 o'clock. Our neighbors across the street (the ones who had the kids over to swim the day of the hurricane) have soooo very graciously offered to let the five of us invade their home for a while and we've humbly taken them up on their offer. So that's about the long and the short of our update for now. I'm sure things will change around alot and we are trying to steady ourselves to be very flexible for the next couple of months.