Albany Park Flood .. Restoring DVD's -- Week 3

(Our personal flood story, complete with pictures, starts here at "Record Breaking Chicago rains". )

We have received updates and information from both the Albany Park Neighbors site and from the office of Alderman Laurino. I'll post that in a separate entry.

I would love to know how other people in the area are doing with clean-up and repair after the Albany Park flood. It's very slow here.. We don't yet have all of the carpeting pulled up nor do we have all of the wallboard down. My goal is to pull up the rest of the carpeting on the east half of our basement in the next 2-3 days, dry out that part of the basement, put down a tarp, and then start moving all of the saved items over to that side, also all of the saved items from upstairs, which are still cluttering our upstairs living room.

I happened to come across a video from the University of Iowa on salvaging and cleaning old records and DVD's. The University of Iowa, which is located in a beautiful location on the Iowa River in Iowa City, experienced unprecedented flooding last June. The library, the arts campus, and the student union building were seriously damaged, and many buildings are still closed. This video was recorded by the Preservation Department and it gives a demonstration of restoring both old records and DVD's.

Though we were able to save many or our DVD's from the flood, we still have many that were underwater. I will try the approach they suggest, which involves washing the DVD's in distilled water, then drying them first with alcohol, then hanging them to dry.

I haven't mowed my grass since the flood, and I still haven't planted the chrysanthemums that I bought just two days before the big rains. I think our autumn decorations will be a bit sparse this year.

(Next part of the Albany Park Flood Story: Albany Park Gets FEMA aid! )