setting: our dark bedroom
time: 3:30 am
words that I heard coming from someone in our room, I couldn't quite make out who: "mom . . . dad . . . water . . . . all over . . . heard water running . . . .wake up . . . wet . . . everywhere . . . hurry . . . "
me: "Wha ???"
When Dave and I finally became coherant, we discovered water all over the kitchen, pantry, bathroom, hallway and through the wall into the bedroom closet. At 3:30 am, we got out the wet/dry vacuum and sucked up gallons and gallons of water. At 4:00 am, I emptied my closet. At 4:20 am we pulled up the carpet in my closet and sucked gallons of water out of the padding. At 4:40 we mopped, wiped and dried the floor. At 5:05 am as the sun was beginning to lighten the horizon, we crawled back in to bed.
Yesterday, we had completed some floor tile behind the refridgerator, hooked up the water line to the fridge at 7 pm. Sometime after midnight, the water line let loose and it was spewing water for who knows how long. Why couldn't that have happened during the evening while we were sitting right there?
ok - I have decided I'm going to stop complaining. I am just writing this as a prelude to the following list of blessings:
- The bottom of the pantry got scrubbed clean.
- The floor of my closet is getting a full spring cleaning.
- Dave owns every tool known to man. Because of this (sometimes annoying) fact, we had a wet/dry vacuum handy at a moment's notice.
- The toilet had not been set yet. Because the floor drain was still open, the water eventually got deep enough to flow into the bathroom and down the drain thus keeping the water from being 2 feet deep.
- Nothing in my closet got significantly wet. The pad under the carpet was holding an enormous amount of water, but it had not soaked up through carpet much yet.
- Melanie is a light sleeper and she can warn us of emergencies in the night. Thank you Mel. (It could have been very bad by morning.)
- If our house was perfectly square and level, the water may have flowed toward the living room carpet. Yay for an old lop-sided house!
- I don't get to see the sunrise very often. It was lovely.
6 comments:
Are you freekin kidding me! I am so sorry and you have every right to complain. I told you that you were lucky you have SuperDave to rectify your bathroom floor troubles...I didn't say that you could never complain when justified.
Do you need any help?
WOW...that's all I have to say about that!
3:30am seems to be the icing on the cake. It would have been bad enough during normal daylight hours. I cannot believe your luck. You dug pretty deep to find some blessings. Good work.
You are lucky Dave had a wet dry vac. We had a water main bust in Ohio one time. We had no wet-dry vac. After soaking it up with every towel we owned (even the good ones), we still had a puddled floor. We ended up with no water for the next two days (the next day being Valentine's). We couldn't shower, wash dishes, make bottles, launder all those soggy towels (or hang them out to dry because it was freezing out side). We had to replace the flooring throughout the house...every where but the three bed rooms.
Actually, that month reminds me quite a bit of your month. Although, I think it lasted closer to a year and seemed to ruin every holiday and birthday for us.
So Good luck. I feel for you guys.
Oh, oh, oh! That totally stinks big time.
We once lived in an apt. that leaked so badly mushrooms grew upside down from the ceiling over Robin's bed. (I pressed them into her baby book.) The management was too cheap to do things right and we suffered that horrible festering mold smell for that entire 110 degree Summer. I was expecting James - it was unbearable.
Little children and toilets and drains are often the Bermuda Triangle of Trouble. Rachel once flushed a plastic bag, and attempted flushing a live parakeet as well. But our favorite memory is the ritualized bailing out of the laundry/storage room every time there was a thunderstorm. It was like a mini-tsunami right under the walls directly into the house. Our Snidley Whiplash LDS Landlord said, "It's an act of God", when we complained.
ya at 9am i was wondering why no one was getting up... you could have woken me up. although i really don't know how lovely of a person i would have been at that hour.
I see the comment I posted did not get published! So I am going to try again! Those refridgerator lines do worry me, I had a friend who went on vacation for a week and her's broke or leaked the whole time she was gone, lost everything! Im glad you could find the positive in this experience! Love Ya!
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