Peter Wilson remembers water lapping at his front door as he watched a neighbour paddle a canoe down the street.
Coming up on two years ago, the Bow and Elbow rivers crested their banks, forcing 100,000 Albertans from their homes. When the waters retreated, what was left was a sopping mess of mud-ruined basements and trashed homes – and a massive task of rebuilding and renovation for people such as Alec Williams, a contractor who over the past two years has helped restore flood-battered neighbourhoods.
“[It] was bedlam for a few weeks, at least,” Mr. Wilson recalls.
“Mud and pickup trucks everywhere, dumpsters in front of every house and garbage trucks rolling up and down the street. It was exactly like the aftermath of a war zone.”
Mr. Wilson and his wife Joanne Todesco, live in a two-storey, Craftsman-style home on Riverdale Avenue near Calgary’s East Elbow Park. Three and a half years ago they hired Mr. Williams to expand their basement, install new flooring, add stucco and porches and paint the exterior a fetching grey-powder blue.
But on June 20, 2013, the flood hit, ruining all these improvements and leaving devastation – and a slimy residue.
“The calls started coming before the water even hit,” Mr. Williams says. He and his team were soon working almost around the clock helping homeowners put their lives back in order.
Before anything could be fixed, a massive cleanup had to happen to clear out the wet and soggy detritus and to stamp out mould.
“Before you can start putting things back together, you’ve got to make sure mould doesn’t start growing in the walls and construction materials,” Mr. Williams says.
Extreme humidity levels combined with wet wood make the perfect petri dish in which mould can breed.
Mr. Williams employed a quick-dry method, using hydronic heating systems to push moisture out of the house, followed by a mould remediation spraying technique.
For Mr. Wislon and Ms. Todesco, it was back to basics.
“Everything was gone and it had to be stripped back to the bones,” Mr. Williams says.
In the course of demolition and clean up, Mr. Williams uncovered structural issues with the home that had been lurking for years.
“Their basement had been all chopped up,” Mr. Williams says. “There was lino flooring in one area and tiles or bare concrete in others. It had just been done in fits and starts.”
“It was a little basement, not fully functional, with a cork floor – though it floats really well!,” Mr. Wilson says.
Now the low ceiling height in the basement could finally be addressed and the space reconfigured to make it more functional.
Mr. Williams’s team had to remove a concrete wall that ran from one side of the house to the other and install new beams to support the structure.
All the appliances had to be replaced.
“There was not a hot water tank or a furnace that was salvageable after that,” Mr. Williams says. “Anything that had an ignition on it was immediately trash, even if it was brand new.”
Toys and games belonging to their now-grown kids were destroyed, along with 30 years worth of Christmas decorations. “Memorabilia,” Mr. Wilson muses. “That’s probably the worst part of it.”
But the couple did manage to salvage several prized Persian carpets. “The folks who [cleaned them] actually brought in a special machine from India just for dealing with these flood-damaged carpets and restored them to perfect condition.”
Meanwhile, Mr. Williams’s crew changed the location of the toilet and the shower, re-poured concrete and changed the configuration and entrance of the bathroom while improving the layout. “It was much more functional; it made more sense,” he says.
They created a little workout space, modified the workshop and shifted the stairs back, which improved the bottom landing. They corrected the different flooring heights in the front foyer because the hardwood floors had been water damaged. The baseboards had to be replaced.
Ripping it apart made the basement cleaner and more functional. The Wilson-Todesco renovation wrapped last summer to the tune of $250,000.
“Now, everything flows,” Mr. Williams says. “The flooring and finishes are consistent throughout.
“They ended up with a much superior layout and more functional use of their basement.”