When life gives you lemons...

Two weeks ago tomorrow, the same day the twins were christened, Cam and I got a big surprise when we got home that afternoon. I had sat down to feed the babies while Cam was unloading the car. He walked down the hall toward our laundry room when he announced that we had a huge mess. (I'll spare you his exact wording because I don't think blogger will allow it. Ha, ha!) The huge mess to which Cam was referring was a flooded hallway. At the time we had no idea where the inch or so of water had come from. We later discovered that our water heater had evidently had its better days and decided to release its contents onto our hardwood floor. The same hardwood floor Cam and his Dad installed in January 2006 when we bought the house. Being that the floor is a little over two years old, it couldn't even be considered "gently used" and still new to us. I digress. Anyway, we surveyed the damage and much to our dismay, the floor in the hallway was, in fact, ruined. On the bright side, the floor in the adjoining living room was just fine. So with the help of Cam's co-worker, Lee, and his Dad, they pulled up the hallway floor. I called Home Depot to see if they had our floor on hand and, as you can probably imagine, it had been discontinued. Great. Now, back to the title of this post, when life gives you lemons, what do you do? That's right. Make lemonade. So, given that lovely bit of info, this gave us the opportunity to do a little home improvement project. We decided lay ceramic tile instead. Granted, prior to the water heater spewing, we had no intentions of doing anything to the floor. But I truly believe it worked out for the best. Last weekend, Cam and his friend Brook, spent all day Saturday and half the day Sunday laying tile. They did an awesome job and I'm almost glad the water heater decided to give out. Check out the before and after pics:

Before....

And, drum roll please, AFTER....

Here's a close-up:

My camera really doesn't do it justice but you get the idea. So, moral of the story is, when things look really, really bad...look for opportunity in the situation. Yeah, I know, blah, blah, blah! :)