After hunting for a house close to the trails, we finally bought one—and almost immediately got punched in the face by reality. I woke up to a bathroom running and a pool of water spreading into the living room and into multiple rooms. At first I wanted to believe fans and a shop vac would handle it, but I got the nudge I needed to rip up the carpet, and that turned into a much bigger project. I ended up going through insurance and hiring a remediation company, and I’m glad I did—moisture had traveled into adjoining bedrooms, so they tore out tile, anything that could trap water, and even drywall up to knee height, then ran dehumidifiers/heaters/fans to dry everything before mold could start. Once the house was finally dry, the rebuild landed on me—especially after insurance came back covering roughly half of the contractor quote. So I went full DIY: carpet and tack strips out, baseboards off, tile smashed up, subfloor cleaned and patched, and I opened up the kitchen by ripping out the little bridge/pantry setup so the space feels less compartmentalized. For flooring, I went with Flooret Modin Signature in Nakan (big 9x72 planks) because it’s fully waterproof, has an attached underlayment, and the 40-mil wear layer was way beyond what I found locally. It was a lot of measuring, scribing, and re-cutting, but we ended up with a clean, durable floor that can handle Maru, our lifestyle, and our first kid coming soon.