2 Years Later

We’ve made it two years since the Marshall Fire. Wow. Since I last posted here, we’ve settled into our new house, Avery started Kindergarten in our new neighborhood school, and we finished some small house projects (including the fire tree project!).

Tree project: In June 2022, as cleanup of lots was being completed we learned that the only full-grown tree on the property was scheduled to be removed. So….we decided to rescue it to give it a new life in our new home.

We hired an arborist, found a local wood mill, and worked with them all to remove the tree, transport it to Denver for milling and finishing, and all that. We also worked with a designer (our friend Claire, who helped us through those first weeks!) and local contractor to do the work to install the tree as a new mantle in our family room.

Our family room had this kind of old school look to the fireplace, and this very deep shelf/cabinet that was previously for a deep box TV.

So we decided to turn the shelves into a dry bar with wine storage, and to update the fireplace mantle and tile to a more modern look.

Other than this fire-related project, we’ve mostly just tried to move forward in our new space. We’re still randomly finding things we need to buy (pastry cutter this week, apparently), and remembering our lost things weekly — but it’s generally just normal life now.

Muirfield Lot: Our old lot is still vacant, but we made some money “renting” it to our neighbor’s builder for a few months this summer to store dirt. Lots aren’t really selling as vacant land at the moment, given the construction, market, and interest rates. We’re optimistic that once more families move home next year, interest may increase. The few people we know who are successfully selling their lots are doing so with long-term contingencies with tons of unknowns. We’re not in a rush, and we’re still not 100% decided on what to do with it, so we might as well hold on to it for now.

Lawsuit: In June of this year, the final report was released about the cause of the fire. The short story is that they have determined two ignition points: one from the cult burning trash a few days before and the other from Xcel electric poles. As a result, we have joined one of the many lawsuits holding Xcel Energy accountable for the latter ignition. Especially given the location of our home (the southern side of the fire), we are in a closer line to the Xcel ignition point than the other. We don’t really know what it will look like to be a part of the legal proceedings, what might come of it, or any of that — but we had to file before the statute of limitations expired on December 30, 2023. We generally just answered a big questionnaire and shared this site with our lawyers – they used what we had recorded here to share our story of evacuating, recovering, etc. to bring to court on December 15th. We don’t know yet what our next steps will be there.

2nd Anniversary: Like on the 1 year anniversary of the fire, we spent the afternoon seeing our neighbor friends and catching up on everyone’s plans for rebuilding, selling, etc.

This year we had a great group, and were even visited by a Louisville PD officer who was stationed near our house on the night of the fire. He shared some videos we hadn’t previously seen from that day, and hung out with us and had some snacks while we were out there.

It is always so healing to be with our people on this crazy day. We’re still feeling fortunate and grateful for all of the love and support throughout this whole ordeal. We’ll see what 2024 brings for us next! Happy New Year. ❤️