5/4/25

Benjamin had a terrible storm late Tuesday afternoon that made national news with baseball size hail, 100 mph winds, and a tornado a few miles to the east. Most west and some north facing windows in town were broken and roofs were destroyed. My mom's west windows were broken out and some north windows were broken. Two very kind high school guys cleaned up the glass in her house and then helped Becky and Kamryn get her windows covered Tuesday night with some left over materials from our storage. Rick made a trip to Benjamin early Wednesday morning with plywood and helped cover windows for several people and for the church parsonage. Our new west windows somehow survived, but the screens were torn up. The roof and metal siding on the west side took a beating. A big thank you to Becky for mowing the yard not once, but twice, this week. Also, a big thank you to our neighbor for hauling off another pile of trash and junk to the city dump.

We both arrived early Saturday morning with the goal to finish sanding and sealing the hardwood floors. Rick ran the belt sander, and I ran the orbital sander for many hours on Saturday. It's not perfect, but we did the best we could without dragging it out into another weekend. The floors are around 80 years old and have seen some stuff. Most water and other spots really can't be sanded out.

Rick started the final vacuuming and started putting down the sealer while I worked my way through the house touching up the worst areas. We got the first two coats of sealer down (and did another round of sanding and vacuuming between the 1st and 2nd coats) on Saturday evening. The product recommended 3 coats, but the first coat took much more than expected, so we were a little short and only had enough for about 1/2 of the house for the 3rd coat on Sunday morning. The sealer needed more time to cure before doing heavy work such as putting in doors/door frames, so we left earlier than normal and replaced some of the window covers at my mom's house with OSB/plywood before heading home. Rick continues working on the cabinets in his home workshop.

Next week we'll start putting in door frames/doors and will probably put down 1 1/2 coats of sealer at the end of the weekend (we'll end up with 4 coats rather than 3).

Photo of the Tuesday storm from a storm chaser

Not looking or feeling too great after about 8 hours of sanding and vacuuming on Saturday

First coat of sealer going down in the living room

First coat in the hallway

Front door

3rd bedroom

Looking through kitchen into living room from laundry room

Kitchen (cabinets should cover dark areas on sides)

Living room (baseboards should cover most of the dark on the edges)

3rd bedroom

Hallway from 3rd bedroom

Hallway into 2nd bedroom

Hallway from 2nd bedroom

Kitchen

Living room

Master bedroom

Living room and kitchen looking toward laundry room

3rd coat in living room

3rd bedroom

Hallway from porch after 3rd coat

Back door (even rougher after storm)

Many dents on metal siding on west side of house

Large dents near window

Lots of large and small dents

Large broken branch in backyard tree

Back of shed from neighbor's house

Northwest window at my mom's house (we left the tarp in place)

Southwest window at my mom's house (replaced paneling and tarp with OSB)

Both storm windows busted through by storm

OSB

Top cabinets for kitchen

Bottom cabinets for kitchen

Cabinet in progress

Future main bathroom cabinet