That Saturday when Dan turned 7-months-old was the same day that Jason flew down to Las Vegas to clean out his grandfather's house. Since his passing a few months ago, we are in the process of selling it. We now have a buyer so we needed to go down and clean it out. That story is another fun adventure that we're having!
I digress. The point I'm trying to make is that the weekend of the 11th, I was home with Dan and the dogs, by myself, from the evening of the 12th through the evening of the 15th (Saturday to Tuesday). That Saturday night we had our first thunderstorm of the season. Dan did fantastic! The storm didn't bother him at all. Such a happy, easy-going baby :) Sunday comes along and it's time to do a load of laundry. I get Dan into his jumper and I head downstairs to the basement. I get to the bottom of the stairs and - wet socks. Water in the basement! My goal for the few days that Jason was gone was to do the back splash in the upstairs bathroom. I tried to find someone to keep an eye on Dan for a few hours on Sunday with no luck. Now I come downstairs and get this! I had to find someone to keep an eye on Dan. I couldn't clean this up while taking care of him at the same time. Thankfully our sitter was able to take him on a Sunday. So four hours later, the basement is mostly cleaned up and dry. It turned out that the tubing we used to divert the output from the well into the floor drain coiled up into the well causing the floater to get stuck. Stuck floater = sump pump not working during the heavy rain >>> water in the basement.
 |
| Water at the base of the steps leading to the basement. |
With the pump working again and the basement drying out, I figure I'm in the clear. I get the laundry done and spend the evening playing with Dan. Monday morning I ran downstairs before leaving to grab the SD card out of my camera. At this point, dogs have been fed and are put away, Dan and I are all packed up ready to go, so this is just a quick grab and run. The camera is sitting on a shelf along the West side of the house. I step in front of the shelf right into something wet. My first thought was that one of the dogs had an accident downstairs. I turned on the light and my heart sank. We had water downstairs!
I drop Dan off at the sitters and I'm stuck in my head wondering how in the world this happened, what am I going to do, how much is this going to cost to replace, etc. Mom makes a good suggestion to call the insurance company to see if they would cover the damage. The first call made it sound like this wouldn't be covered under our insurance policy. They did give me a few names of cleaning services to help clean up the mess. I called the first one on the list and within an hour (they took my info right away and had to get into their morning meeting) they called me back to tell me someone would be there between 10 and 11am. Quick, rush home to meet the cleaning guy - Javier. I thought that the water was only in the family room, but what ended up happening was that the entire perimeter was wet. Javier determined that due to the rain plus the sump pump not working for the first part of the storms, water backed up in the drain tile and leaked into the lower level. Because that was the cause, our insurance company will now cover the damage minus our deductible!
Javier took up the portion of the carpet that was soaked, set up six industrial fans and two dehumidifiers, and let me know that they (ServPro) will be back tomorrow to tear up the rest of the carpet. We did get lucky, as their normal procedure is to only take up the carpet pad and treat the carpet itself, tearing up the carpet as well would be an extra cost. Well, our carpet and carpet pad were attached so we're getting new flooring without the extra cost of the carpet removal! Anyway, so Javier sets up his equipment and heads to another job. He gives me instructions on how to care for the equipment, especially if one of the breakers blow. Not 30 minutes after he leaves, the power goes out. Not only does the power go out in the house, but in the entire neighborhood! This happened around 2:30pm. We didn't get power back until almost 7pm that night! While waiting for the power to come back on, I made countless trips up and down the stairs bringing our stuff from the basement and lower level up to the living room and bedroom. Our bedroom now looks like a library!
Our sitter has been fantastic through all this. She watched Dan until about 6pm that night when I called it quits. Plus Dan needed to eat and I only packed enough milk for a normal day at her house.
Tuesday I stay home from work so ServPro can come in and tear out the carpet. While they do this, the bridge of my nose starts to swell. I figured it was an allergic reaction to all the dust and mold flying around, so I take some Benedryl and ice it. After the last few days, Tuesday was a very good day overall.
 |
| Tearing up the carpet. |
Thursday I actually get to work all day. It was nice to get back into the swing of things. However, Friday morning, I felt awful from the infection so I stayed home and got another appointment with the doc. I knew I needed stronger antibiotics than what I was given. Before I made it to the appointment, a guy from the insurance company came in and took pictures and measurements to determine how much they'll give us to replace the carpet. I need to call them up for that number, plus let them know that we needed to replace drywall as well since it had also gotten wet.
So that was my week last week. We ended up not going to the cities for Easter like we normally do due to me not feeling well plus with all the mess at home. We now have the drywall replaced, the floors were sprayed to prevent any mold spores from growing, the wallpaper is torn down, and now I'm thinking we might as well do the downstairs bathroom while we're making a mess of the rest of the place. The dogs have been pretty good through all this and Dan is as happy as ever. I hope everyone had a wonderful Easter!
 |
| Dan's Easter outfit. |
No comments:
Post a Comment