We had an unexpected adventure this week. I shall tell you the story.
Early Friday morning Kaylynn woke up at 1:30 am to be fed. Davin was taking this feeding so he went downstairs to get the milk. I jumped out of bed in a flash when I heard what I thought was the sound of him falling down the stairs. On my way down I heard loud rushing water and for a split second the thought went through my mind as to why Davin was doing laundry. Then I realized this wasn’t a normal washing machine noise, and something was very wrong. I was astonished to see a flood in the living room and about that time the waterfall sound stopped and Davin quickly came back from shutting off the water main. I realized later the sound that jerked me out of bed was the sound of him slipping in the water as he ran toward the laundry room knocking out a leg of his desk as he fell.
We quickly set to work moving everything out of the flooded laundry and living rooms. The water was a quarter of an inch deep in the laundry room and flowed down into the crawlspace. It spilled into the living room and spread all the way across to the patio door. Thankfully none of our furniture or electronics were damaged. We discovered the cause: a connection hose on the washing machine had burst.
I propped up Kaylynn with a bottle and we sopped up water with every towel we own, wringing it out into bowls. Three hours later we had done all we could and there was no more standing water, but already there was a noticeable musty smell.
We called our insurance company and a water damage restoration company in the morning. The restoration guy showed up within a half hour and assessed the damage. The floors, some of the walls and the crawlspace insulation were saturated. We basically hired him on the spot and by the end of the day we had the insulation pulled out and our entire living room and laundry room flooring ripped up with fans and a dehumidifier going.
So right now we’re living in our dining room and play room. Thankfully it’s a huge space and can accommodate all our living room stuff, too. We are all noticing the air in the house is hot (80-90) and dry. The fans are loud, too, so it’s not very pleasant to be home. The guy checked our progress this morning and said the house will definitely be dry by Monday when he returns again.
Thank goodness for babies needing to be fed in the middle of the night and for home insurance though we still have to pay a deductible on this. The whole downstairs flooring will have to be replaced since it’s all the same stuff and they can’t match it exactly. This floor was a do-it-yourself project by the previous owners so there are minor things that we thought would be nice to fix, but it wasn’t anywhere near the top of our priority list. Well, now it is, and we’ll be picking out new flooring soon. What a mess!
