There some things which happen to you in life that you never forget. The Flood, as we have come to refer to it as will be one of those.
June the 1st it all begun, as returned from a few days away to find all our electrics had gone off, the freezer defrosted and a very strange odor filling the house. It didn't take long for us to discover the trickle of water which the emergency plumber told us had probably been running for a few days, and which had filled our studio with a foot of water. A pipe had simply popped out of its join, absolutely nothing we could have done to prevent it ......just one of those things.
I'm a pretty calm person, good to have around in a crisis, but on this particular occasion I will admit I panicked. The overwhelming feeling of sickness, and pure dread filled me to me core. I knew we had lost a lot immediately as we wadded into the water, half way up my calf, to open the back doors and allow the torrent of water to run out on to our patio. I knew we had lost everything in the lower draws of the planchests, all the stored frames, all our antique planchests, hundreds of pounds of backing board, stiffy bags, bubble wrap and stationary.
Artworks were soaked through, some disintegrated, other with ink running. Not only was it Grahams but other artists who we were stocking at the time too. It was heartbreaking, sorting and drying all these stunning pieces of work, saving what we could but mostly cataloging the damage. The thing about water of course is that it travels. Given time it slowly creeps and seeps into everything....its the cruelest of the elements in some respects.
It took us about two weeks to fully asses the damage. We filled a skip twice over, and roped more friends and family into helping us than you can imagine! nearly three months on we are still juggling insurance claims and living in the chaos of what we managed to salvaged.
But we are back online, but only with Grahams work as we have no where to store anything and in all honestly cant bear the responsibility of other peoples work for a while. Something like this seriously knocks your confidence.
What I have learnt from this experience...
Always get insurance, you just never know what life will throw at you.
Always read your insurance carefully, ask lots of questions and check your renewal policy.
Insurance is boring, but man you will be glad of it if something like this ever happens to you!!
