It's very difficult to describe what a person is thinking and feeling at that one moment. That moment when you are helpless to stop something devastating from happening. You really want too, but there is nothing that can be done. The closest thing I can relate this to is watching someone die. When my dad had cancer I was devastated. I didn't want this to happen, there has to be something that can be done. We have to find whatever that is, and we have to do it. We just HAVE TO. After a few days it sinks in. There's nothing at all that you can do. I watched my dad take his last breath. I checked his pulse and his heart was still beating. As his heart sped up trying to get oxygen to his body, he was at that moment with me. He wasn't conscious anymore, but inside there was a war raging; Do whatever it takes to survive. At the same time, there is nothing to do. There is nothing that will get you through this. These moments are probably when we are at our lowest, and I can say first hand what you need at that moment is hope. You don't need a concrete plan yet, you just need hope. Until you have been through it, it's hard to understand. My family needed hope. My kids needed hope. We were on this path, there's no place to stop, but someone has to guide us. That I believe, was my job and to hell with anything else, I would lead us to a better life.
While staying with my brother-in-law took the immediate stress off the question 'Where will we stay?', it was by no means a long term or permanent situation. The house was too small for 9 people (what house isn't). There wasn't enough hot water for everyone to shower. It just wasn't built to handle the load we put on it. We needed a plan. Something that not only got us further ahead, but something that gave us what we needed most, hope. I started sketching floor plans. I devoted every extra free second I had to what we could or should do. We did have some insurance on the possessions in the home. Since the home was still actually in my mothers name and we did not have a death certificate from the state, we could not insure it. So if we did rebuild we would have to pay for it ourselves. Maybe we shouldn't rebuild it, maybe we should move away and forget it ever existed. My wife and I had a conversation that lasted several days. We were both open to the option of rebuilding, but it would create a strain on everyone, including the kids. They needed to be part of this decision just as much as we did. Derek immediately said yes to the rebuild, Brad was pretty set on rebuilding. Little Samantha didn't care as long as everyone was happy. Savannah didn't know, but I could tell she wanted to do something.
It had been years since I worked in construction. This wasn't going to be a cake walk for sure. Before we could get started, we needed to go through whatever we could of the ashes, clean the site up, dig out the old basement, remove some trees, grade it down, level it, dig footings, pour concrete, and lay the foundation. That was only the first steps! Despite my warnings, and knowing it was a monumental task for 2 people and 4 kids they wanted to do it. I started making sketches of each floor, scaling them, counting studs and getting a list of materials for cost. I drew the entire skeleton in CAD using a borrowed computer. My rough cost for lumber was over $16,000.00. That would be all of our savings plus most of the insurance money we had. At that cost there was no way we could build it out of pocket unless we changed the scale of this thing. We made a few changes but it just wouldn't come out under $16,000.00. We might have to borrow if we can't get the roof and siding on.
By this point (it's been 2 weeks since the fire) we were starting to get some advice from friends and family. Generally the advice was to not rebuild, or to buy a mobile home to replace what was there. I know they were probably trying to help, but we decided we wanted to rebuild. We had enough capital to get a really good start, maybe even get to the roof, but probably not finish it. First order of business was making plans to get heavy equipment out there to clean it up. The cost of the house was going to take everything we had so labor was up to us entirely. My wife and kids were going to have to learn some things they probably never planned to learn, and they are going to learn fast.
After a thorough review of the house plans I presented them to my wife and kids. The shell was sketched and materials were listed but very little interior was drawn. They began breaking the house up picking the sizes of rooms. I had to keep everyone engaged and focused on what could be, not what was at the time. I took their sketches and redrew everything to the correct dimensions. When it was all done, this thing was huge. The changes had added about $5000.00, but we could still do it. We talked it over and made sure everyone realized what we were about to do. This thing was going to be a monster. Our youngest son Brad said something that we now repeat to each other almost daily:
'Go big, or go home-less'
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