How to Remodel Your Home After Flood Damage
There’s no denying that flooding can cause all kinds of devastation and destruction. Even seemingly low levels of flooding can result in permanent damage to properties and means extensive renovations and remodeling must ensue.
You’re likely reading this article because your home got flood-damaged, and you’re now at the stage where you can start repairing and remodeling your property. Before you begin with flood damage restoration, there are some steps you must first take. They are as follows:
Extract All Water and Moisture
The problem with water is that it can easily penetrate drywall and soak through to your home’s brickwork. For some people, the cause of their flooding might have been burst water mains pipes in their houses.
Sadly, flood damage often brings raw sewage water into people’s homes. As you can imagine, the latter will make your home smell really bad and is undoubtedly a health hazard. After all, diseases like cholera run rampant in sewage and, subsequently, flood water.
The first order of events should be an intense sewage clean up in your home to remove any risks to human health and make your property dry. You can use pumps to get rid of standing water, but a specialist will need to extract water that has soaked through to your drywall.
It’s crucial that you start pumping out the floodwater as soon as possible. Doing so will lessen the risks to human health and potentially decrease the cost of remodeling your house.
Get Tested for Mold
You’ll also need to get your property tested for mold hidden behind walls and ceilings. If significant mold spore colonies are present, you’ll need a professional to disinfect your home before any remodeling work can begin.
If you continue without treating mold, your home could pose a risk to your health and anyone else that lives there or visits.
Remove Anything Damaged by Water
Most people must discard anything damaged by floodwater, irrespective of how ‘clean’ the water was when the damage occurred. Examples of things you need to throw away include carpet, furniture, beds, and even clothing.
As you probably know by now, the cost of replacing all those damaged items can skyrocket, so you must contact your insurance company and claim against your home insurance policy. Doing so will, of course, lessen the financial burden of replacing your damaged possessions.
Decide on Any Upgrades Sooner Rather Than Later
The lower levels of your home are now virtually a blank canvas for your post-flooding remodeling. It’s at this point where you can decide if you wish to make certain upgrades, such as a kitchen reconfiguration.
You may even decide that you want to replace your exterior doors and windows or add flooding protection to avoid such a situation from occurring in the future. Adding upgrades will be cheaper now than doing so after all the remodeling work is complete. Now is also the ideal time to address existing issues that allowed flood damage to become such a problem in the first place. Given that you’re already investing in work, finally getting around to things like structural issues or leaky roofing with the help of a company like River Oaks Roofing can certainly save you hassle down the line. Not to mention that these added protections ensure that future flooding doesn’t ever compromise the remodels you’re putting in place right now.
Final Thoughts
There are quite a few steps you must take before you can remodel your home after flooding. You may even need to wait a substantial period before starting to fix your property if the floodwater is slow to subside on your homestead.