High Water

We came home from Merrillville to a basement full of water. As I looked down into the basement I could see toys floating by. Val's first reaction was to run down all the way into the laundry room to figure out what the buzzing noise was. Yes, that's right, he ran through about five inches of water to stop a buzzing noise. So the first night I was just glad I still has a husband. We were so worn out by Christmas that I didn't even realize the impact until the next day.

What happened was a simple sump pump malfunction. So we were able to fix the stuck arm and the pump did its job clearing the water back out. But we were left with drenched carpet and wet walls. A real homeowner's nightmare.

Val worked like crazy (and put me to work) every day. We rented industrial fans and dehumidifiers (they call em dehums in the flood business) and tried to simply dry it out. This plan was based on some advice from two different flood companies. This advice was not good.
The carpet guy we consulted adviced us to get the carpet out as quickly as possible.
This is when the real fun began. We cut out carpet and Val heaved the soaking pad up the stairs and out the back door with strength I did not know he had. We worked well into the night and I ended up shop-vacing while sitting on a chair half asleep.

The whole clean up process lasted about a week and took place at night after the kids were in bed. Special thanks to Matt Lamkin for coming over and helping Val move the heavy Foos ball table and get the rest of the carpet out. I've moved that table once and will never again.

We now are all dried out and just waiting to get new carpet. All four of us miss the basement so much. It is an important space for all of us. The first night, when I called Mom, she was so sorry and I didn't realize at the time why she felt so bad. But now I do. It's kind of one of those times when you pull together and thank your lucky stars for all the blessings in your life. This was by no means a tragedy, rather a large inconvenience. Still, I understand a little better the real tragedy of a flood. Our losses were few, the mattress that Drew loved to jump on is molding in the garage and a group picture from our wedding that I loved is ruined( anyone have a copy?) oh yeah, and the laundry dryer.

I must say that Val rocked the house (or basement) working so hard to get it dry. He worked hard without any complaints and still had energy left over to get up with Drew in the middle of the night (potty or nightmares). He gets the job done and that is just one of the many reasons I love him so much. Drew had a dream the first night that he sucked up all the water from the mattress with a firetruck hose (what else). Aww poor guy, he really spent hours jumping on that thing, an end of an era...Nora continues to bang on the basement door and can't understand why we have abandoned the playroom.

Shew! What a week after quite a crazy month. So looking forward to a lazy weekend. Go Colts!

We grew attached to these shop vacs

Is it really two am?

The culprit

Mmmm. soggy carpet pad