After a rocky start to 2012 (our dogs running away) I was a little worried that this January might be a nightmare like last January and on January 17th I was even more worried when we had a minor FLOOD!
The hose to our washing machine broke while Olivia was eating breakfast and I was working on the computer (probably blogging about losing Jake) and when Liv gets up from the table to head out to school, she starts yelling "Mom, there's water everywhere!!!"
Sure enough, what we thought was the washing machine filling up extra loudly and extra longly, was it filling our laundry room, bathroom, hallway, the edges of Tess's room and the living room with water, several inches of it! Water was spraying up out of the top of the back of the washer and I got soaked trying to turn off the valves back there to stop it. I turned them off and it just kept on coming. This laundry basket caught some water that came up over it's edges as it sat on the dryer.
I couldn't get the main water valve outside to turn off and I wasn't even sure which pipe and valve it was, so I called Russ and Olivia ran and got our next-door neighbor Anath. She tried to switch off a different valve out front and I finally got a towel which helped me crank the right valve enough to get it off. Phew! Now the clean up began.
Olivia and Anath swept most of the water out the back door while I tried to find some professional help. Then we soaked up water with all our pool towels. Next came the shop vacs and our little green machine which revealed just how gross our carpets were. It was probably time they got cleaned anyway.
I don't know what I would have done without Olivia and Anath helping out!
A carpet cleaning friend of ours brought over his professional fans and we left them blowing above the padding, but below the carpet for 48 hours.
Amazingly, we were able to save the carpet and nothing else was damaged... or so we thought...
Russ spent the entire day replacing the hoses and valves on the back of the washer so it would actually shut off behind the washer if we ever had a hose break again, and when he went to turn the main water back on to the whole house, our water heater busted a leak and started gushing water into the garage!!! We got that replaced quickly, and then we thought we were safe...
... but we were wondering why the mildew smell grew worse and not better as our carpets dried. Then one afternoon, about 2 days after the flood, I opened the coat closet to put away Rustin's shoes when it hit me... the smell actually hit me! We had completely forgotten that the closet had got soaked and we NEVER DRIED IT OUT!
We immediately pulled out all the shoes (missing in this picture) and the jackets and the food storage boxes (HEAVY!) Luckily, nothing was ruined other than the carpet and padding. We just tossed it.
Now can we relax???
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