Amelia Raymond is now ripping out the fixtures, fittings and furniture in her recently renovated home in Monmouth.
When the flood hit, the water was at chest height and took everything downstairs with it.
“We didn’t have any warning, I opened the front door – it was just a river outside, and there was nobody there,” she said.
“The water was above the mantlepiece – that amount of water lifted all of the furniture, everything had been floating.”
Amelia, her husband and four-year-old son are in rented accommodation and this Christmas will be very different.
“We’ve just had to start again really,” she said.
The family do not know when they will be able to return home.
She added: “Because we don’t have insurance it’s down to us.
“Obviously there’s things we can’t do until it dries out fully, the kitchen we can’t put anything in now because it’s still wet – people with insurance have been told six months.”
Amelia said she had no plans to move, but believed it would be hard to sell the house now.
“I think it would be really difficult to sell this house now – I don’t think anyone’s going to be looking to buy on Drybridge Street – but it would be nice to live a little higher,” she said.