A week after cabin fire, bloggers feel sad and grateful
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IDAHO FALLS — After their cabin burned down last week, local bloggers Chris and Julia Marcum are talking about the loss.
“Multiple fire investigators are still working to determine the cause, though right now we think it started in the furnace room,” Julia’s post read Tuesday.
Chris and Julia are known for their do-it-yourself home design and decorating website, ChrisLovesJulia.com. Over the past year, they’ve been renovating their cabin on the Palisades Reservoir and documenting their progress.
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As the investigation continues, Chris and Julia have their own theories about what happened, but have been patiently awaiting details of the cause of the fire. Because of the inclement weather, it’s been hard to pinpoint what exactly happened to their A-frame, fire investigators tell EastIdahoNews.com.
The Marcums said on their blog that they weren’t inside the cabin when it caught fire and that they had left 24 hours before.
“We easily could have been there as an entire family,” she says.
Although the couple has been grieving, Julia says they have shed a lot of tears in gratitude.
“I go through it all in my head over and over, what it would have been like to get our whole family out safely if we had been there. Lots of anxiety and trauma around the what-ifs,” Julia says in the post.
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The couple had left Sunday morning, and Monday morning Chris received a video from a mechanic in the area showing the flames of their wooden home. Julia recalls her conversation with Chris: “His voice was shaking when he said, ‘I just want to preface this by saying everything is going to be OK. Our cabin is on fire.'”
Since then the couple has been mourning the loss of the 15-month-old A-frame they’ve been renovating for a year. Chris and Julia’s family and friends have made many memories in the cabin during that time. The weekend before the incident, the couple had redone the bathroom and loft area.
The cabin is now considered a total loss.
“The fire department was already on the scene, and it was a long 70-minute drive to the cabin. We didn’t talk or listen to anything. Just cried,” Julia says in a post.
The fire started around 7:30 a.m. Monday, and both the Swan Valley and Ammon fire departments responded.
“I don’t have all the answers, and I told our friends, ‘I know it’s all going to be OK in time, but right now, I’m just sad.’ So we’ve been taking time to just mourn over the loss of everything,” Julia says in a post.
As of Tuesday morning, the Marcums had not posted to their Instagram page since the incident, but you can find their most recent blog post here.