Yes you read that right. I have a story to tell that is more about coffee but it also could have well been about flood damage. Simply because freeze drying of documents forms the connection. You may have heard of freeze drying papers or books that have been in flood damage, and so frankly have I. But I never dreamt that I would be using that technology because of coffee, not flood damage.

I cringe every time I am at my grandma's house and she offers to make a pot of coffee. Grandma uses the stuff that comes in a jar and has been freeze dried. I usually end up drinking a cup to be nice and listening to her old story of flood damage when she was a kid. While sitting in her kitchen helping her combing over her will with her, I knocked over the steaming mug of instant coffee, loaded with sugar and milk, on top of all of the papers. As hot coffee is wont to do, it soaked through the documents and stained them almost immediately, yes just like flood damage. Grandma and I both panicked and knocked her cup of coffee all over the papers again. They were, at that point, the only copies that had been made.

Rather than start from scratch as I would have done in case of flood damage, I pulled out the phone book and looked up, "flood damage restoration" and started calling places. No one I called was very helpful, most of what I found was flood damage art restoration. One lady I spoke with was able to recommend I have the documents freeze dried so that we could retrieve the information. I found a place that freeze dries flood damage documents and we were ready to go.

The process is pretty simple. The documents are freeze dried to remove the moisture and then reheated to room temperature. Because we only had about ten pieces of paper and it wasn't even flood damage, the process was done quickly and we had the will back in two days. The paper was still coffee stained and was a bit brittle after the freeze dry process, but we were able to retrieve the information we needed and rather than hand write everything down, I took the papers to my house and typed them into the computer. Once that was done, I printed them out, took them back to grandma, who gave her okay on everything and then we took the papers to her lawyer.

Without being able to freeze dry the documents, we would have had to start from scratch and it would have been time consuming. The turnaround for flood damage document freeze drying was quick and painless and it was actually worth the money I spent to have it done. The flood damage company we dealt with charges an average of $30 per pound, but what we had was considerably less than a pound and I ended up paying next to nothing. The flood damage company was very understanding about the situation and did their best to give us a good price and quick delivery.