Woodbury homeowners find silver lining after frozen-pipe flood

Jan. 26--Gene Wood turned the key, but his front door wouldn't budge.

"I could hear the lock unlock, but when I pushed on the door, nothing happened," Wood said.

Gene and his wife, Kathryn, were anxious to get inside their Woodbury townhome on that cold February night: The couple had been on vacation in Mexico for three weeks, and had just spent a long day on airplanes and in airports on their journey back to Minnesota. It was after midnight when Mary Pokluda of Bumblebee Personal Assistants picked up the couple and brought them home.

Unfortunately, their day was about to get even longer.

"When we couldn't open the front door, I started to look up and around," Pokluda says. "I saw a lot of frost and condescension and ice on the door and the glass.

That's when my heart sank. I thought, 'Something's not right.' Gene said he'd go through the garage."

"I used the garage keypad to get in that way instead," Gene says. "As soon as I opened the interior door, I knew instantly what was wrong: It sounded like Niagara Falls."

A water pipe that served the kitchen had burst; water had been flowing like a river through the two-story home for three to six days.

"I ran downstairs to turn the water off," Gene says. "The water was over the top of my tennis shoes."

The devastation the water had wrought was shocking: Ceilings and walls were falling down, wallpaper had peeled away, furniture was ruined, water ran out of the light fixtures.

"After I turned off the water, I went back upstairs and we just stood there, looking at each other," Gene says. "At a moment like that, there's not much you can say. Even Mary was crying."

"I just wanted to turn around and go back to Mexico," Kathryn says.

A light-hearted moment helped.

"I had brought my iPad Mini on the trip," Gene says. "After Mary put the bags down on top of our table, she was holding her hands over her mouth and tears were running down her face.

Then she said, 'Well, Gene, at least it didn't get your Mini.' It was hilarious."

DEVASTATION

After the laughter, Pokluda made a call.

"When they said, 'What are we going to do?' Mary called me," says Bryan Ogle of Ogle CMS (Construction, Maintenance, Services).

Ogle has been in the construction business for more than 35 years, as a builder, remodeler and project manager.

"Mary called me and I said, 'Have them call ServiceMaster (a company that specializes in water damage restoration) and their insurance agent, get that going, and I will meet them in the morning," Ogle says.

With Pokluda's help, the couple got settled in a hotel by about 2:30 a.m.

"Later, the hotel staff admitted that we were the most bedraggled people they had ever seen," says Gene.

"We were soaking wet. We were dazed."

"I think they were in shock," Pokluda says.

In the morning, the townhome looked worse than ever.

"There was stuff everywhere, it was quite the mess," Ogle says. "They said, 'What are we going to do? How is this going to work?' I said, 'Don't worry, everything will be fine.'"

But even the disaster service's employees were shocked.

"They had never seen anything like it," Gene says.

As the water drained, it became clear how devastating this flood was: as devastating as a fire burning the house to the ground.

"Photos, gone," Gene says.

"A lot of it was irreplaceable," Kathryn says. "My wedding dress was destroyed ... original artwork ... all our books ... Christmas ornaments."

"We saved a small amount of clothes and two pieces of heirloom furniture and that's it," Gene says.

REBUILDING

"That first day," Kathryn said, "Bryan told us that this was an opportunity to refigure how (we're) using our space."

After two stressful months of wrangling with two insurance companies -- they were covered under both their townhome association and their personal policy -- it was finally time to begin rebuilding the place that the empty nesters had called home for more than a decade.

"Bryan brought in an interior designer, Kathy Hanson of Kathy Hanson Interiors, and she went through all the things that dated the house," Kathryn says. "One thing was, we had those popcorn ceilings. I hated them. So, we got rid of it. It was a good time to get rid of something like that."

Kathryn looked up to find her pet peeve; Gene looked down to find his.

"The gas fireplace in the lower level was huge, it jutted into the room and took up a huge amount of space," Gene says. "Now I have a 2-foot square gas stove that is more efficient than that big old fireplace ever was."

Besides replacing what had been lost, the couple used this opportunity to make some upgrades.

"We turned the sunroom into an eating area and decided to install recessed lighting in the kitchen and downstairs, because it had been really dark before," Gene says.

The Woods felt grateful for the help they had in the midst of the disaster.

"We were very, very lucky because of two things that happened," Gene says. "One was that I got my insurance through Dawn Bijou Janes, an independent insurance agent with Minnesota Insurance Group. She is in her area of genius, she is known for reading insurance law and insurance policies for 'fun.' This helped because, when I realized we had a $5,000 deductible for our townhome association policy, I learned that Dawn had us covered for that shortcoming with the way she set up our personal policy.

"The second bit of luck was that Mary called Bryan," Gene says. "Bryan agreed to be with me, as a friend, when the insurance people came that first morning.

"His skill and forte is knowing how to rebuild. It was critical that he was there, by my side, as we were talking to the insurance companies."

The couple's friends were also there for them when they temporarily moved into a rental townhome.

"We had rented pots and pans and dishes, but we had no food," Gene says. "One of my friends brought three plastic containers of food, others brought us all these spices. As small as that might seem, it was huge. It stopped the tears."

Their grandsons also helped them focus on the positive.

"We have a huge, big soaking tub that all the kids love," Kathryn says. "Really, it was the only thing that survived. When one of our grandsons came over, he was about 2 at the time, it was the dead of winter and the place was a mess, but he was trying to take his clothes off and get into the tub. He said, 'I'm going swimming.' For him, it was still home."

HOME

Gene and Kathryn finally moved back home around last Memorial Day -- nearly four months after that pipe burst. It took some time getting used to their "new" place.

"It's like we're living in Never Never Land," Gene says. "After 40 years of marriage, of accumulating stuff, we have empty cupboards and closets. That's different."

They have learned some lessons this year.

"The first thing, the moral of the story is, when you have good people around you, it doesn't make any difference what happens to you because, in the end, life will be just fine," Gene says.

"After we got done crying, we realized we still had everything," Gene says. "Our dog is OK. We're here, we're healthy. We have tons of people looking out for us. All the important things, we have. In the end, it's about the people."

This article originally appeared in Spaces magazine.

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