Water damage restoration can be very laborious. I, myself, would prefer not to undergo through water damage restoration procedures and just opt for replacement instead. Why? More than the number of detailed tasks that you need to undergo, safety risks are a big issue as well. Water and electricity (which is present in every flooded home) can be a good mix for electric hazards - very dangerous for those who attempt to do the restoration procedures.

However, water damage restoration remains to be the better option for some. When I asked a few good friends who have been victims of home flooding about the reasons why they opted for water damage restoration instead of property replacement, here's what they gave me.

1. Sentimental value - The most common answer was the value of memories. What comes first to flood victims' minds? Photographs, letters, picture frames, valuable presents from old friends and the like. A simple photograph of your newly born baby girl is worth the arduous water damage restoration. Digital files were not so common ten years ago and so all wonderful moments were captured and printed the conventional way. Some friends had to go through all processes from rinsing and drying up just to restore an old photograph. I've asked how they did it and they gave me the following easy tips:

- First, take out all photographs from the muddy and dirty water right away.

- Wash off mud. To do so, simply rinse in running clear water. Avoid separating photographs manually. This can result to blurry photo prints.

- After washing, allow the photographs to dry out. You can use blotting paper to absorb the excessive water from the photographs.

- One last thing to bear in mind: Do not let the photograph dry out under the direct heat of the sun. This can cause your photographs to curl up so quickly.

2. Financial savings - Another common answer was to save up on excessive expenses. Buying new furniture and appliances will require a lot of money. If some things could be saved and restored, why not give it a chance? A friend of mine was so horrified when he saw two of his iBooks badly soaked in muddy water. He did not succeed in restoring the computers but he did not waste time before bringing it to the nearest Macintosh repair stores in town. For relatively expensive properties, water damage restoration becomes the instant option. When that does not work, replacement becomes the second choice.

3. Save time on re-processing social documents - This is perhaps one of the biggest nightmares about water damage. Losing your birth certificates, social identification cards will mean having to go through the whole application process over again. And this time, you will not just be doing this for one important document but for all documents which have been lost to water damage. This will mean countless follow up calls and emails. Considering the tough process that one will have to go through, most flood victims never pass up an attempt to restore important documents. To do so, they simply get the paper out of the water, rinse then dry. When water damage restoration fails, that's the time they accept they consider going through a new process.

Water damage restoration is not an easy job. Before immediately setting for replacement; however, giving restoration a try is highly recommended.