A dream washes away in a matter of minutes

Mike Nichols thought his family would be in the house by Christmas, after he and his wife spent more than 10 years choosing every fixture and fitting every beam.

That's not going to happen.

On Thursday, Nichols walked the property, surveying the damage and wondering how he, his wife, Mary, and their two teenage daughters are going to come out of a disaster that sent much of their life work collapsing into the Raging River at Preston, about 30 miles east of Seattle.

"Every detail in this house is something my wife and I worked on," said Nichols, 50.

In just a few minutes Monday afternoon, nearly half the house collapsed, leaving a Toyota Land Cruiser and a Chevy pickup precariously balanced on what remains of the concrete floor slab in the garage, with white water running through what used to be the driveway.

The home was almost done, and Nichols expected to be calling carpet installers in the next few days.

And inside, parts of the two-story home look almost livable. But at about the middle of the structure, the floors start to slope away, and huge cracks are visible in the walls and ceiling, with doors and walls twisted and molding pulled from the floors.

"It's tough," said Nichols, a diesel-engine mechanic. "The first two days, I was nauseous, had butterflies. It took place in 15, 20 minutes. It's really discouraging."

The destruction of the Nichols home was one of the more sobering scenes of the week's flood damage. As rivers receded around the region Thursday, damage was still being assessed, with the threat of more rain on the way.

The 2,700-square-foot home represented a life's dream for Nichols — who grew up in Redmond and Bellevue — and his family.

His wife bought the tree-shaded waterfront property just a few blocks north of Interstate 90 in the early 1990s. They moved to a mobile home on the site after marrying, and they planned the home where they intended to live through retirement.

Work started in the mid-1990s, Nichols said, and it progressed as he had time. He often worked 12-hour days on weekends and vacations.

Every fixture was bought through husband-and-wife shopping trips, with all the countertops, cabinets and faucets placed with their own hands.

Mary kept working as a massage therapist on the Sammamish Plateau. Their two daughters, Jaclyn, 17, and Michelle, 15, attend schools in the Issaquah School District.

The family owns the house free and clear; they lived in the mobile home and built it as they had the money, Nichols said. He estimates they have invested more than $300,000 in the home.

It was built far beyond required codes, he said — it was elevated above a 100-year flood plain and met all applicable setbacks and construction standards, which King County records confirm. Even in the 100-year flood of 1990, he added, water had never touched the planned footprint of the house. During normal flows, the river was more than 70 feet away, far out at the edge of their yard.

Yet all the work was washed away in a few minutes Monday afternoon.

Nichols stayed home from work that day because of heavy rains, and moved some items out of the garage, just to keep them dry. The kids were at school, his wife was at work and Nichols was alone.

"I was watching the water," he said. "About 4 p.m. is when it started getting bad."

Nichols quickly went to the mobile home to get a change of clothes, and he grabbed a checkbook. But before he could even go back for more items, the river took the mobile home, sending it downstream, along with three years of receipts documenting building expenditures.

Nichols had flood insurance on the house through the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), he explained, and a separate policy on the mobile home, although he doesn't know what the coverages will pay. Thursday, he awaited the arrival of an appraiser and insurance adjuster.

He has no plans to rebuild.

"It's junk," he said, adding that he thinks the family will buy another house in the Issaquah School District with the insurance money, but not next to a river.

Now the family is staying with relatives and trying to deal with such questions as whether it might be possible to cut holes in the interior walls and pull the Toyota and Chevy out.

"I don't know what we'll do," Nichols said. "I could never afford to buy anything like this again if we had to start from scratch."

Peyton Whitely: 206-464-2259 or pwhitely@seattletimes.com.