The wise man built his house upon a rock

This is long but I couldn't help it.

Yesterday afternoon we had beautiful carpet installed in our newly finished basement. Don't you just love new carpet. So clean.

This morning Bennett came into our room around 5:30 a.m. and asked if we had steam cleaned the new carpet in his new room while he was asleep because the floor was wet. Guess what, it was wet. VERY WET! Yep. Seriously. Not a joke. The brand new carpet and freshly painted walls, were covered in two to three inches of standing water and floating toys. To make it more fun it was not only the new basement that was wet, but the bottom two levels of our house. Every room, wall to wall, covered in water. I'm not sure how Bennett confused steam-cleaned carpet with carpet that was so wet that water covered your feet as you walked on it, but maybe he was tired.

Our water main to our spinkler line broke. So when the automatic sprinklers came on at ten o'clock last night, the secondary water pooled up in the sprinkler box, spread through the backyard, and eventually came in through the back door, filling our house with water, mud, and bugs. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! We tried to clean up the water with wet-vacs, but there was too much. After professional advice, we decided to pull out the carpet and pad on both wet levels. We then had moisture tests done on the walls to find that there is so much moisture in the walls that all the base boards will need to be pulled off and then six to eight inches of sheetrock will need to be cut away from the floor up. This is so the walls can dry without allowing mold to grow behind them. Man I'm glad I spent all those hours two-toning the baseboards and touching up paint.

On a positive note, we have the best neighbors ever. Word got around and by 9:00 a.m. we had half a dozen neighbors at the house helping. People came with fans to help the drying process begin, tools to help remove the carpet without riping it, and a furniture dolly to help move heavy things (like the hide-a-bed sofa which had sucked up so much water into the matress we could have never moved it with out one). Thanks to their help and support we were able to move two levels of stuff out into the garage without too much loss.

Tonight we are grateful for home owners insurance and we are grateful that no one was hurt. We are grateful that it was not something worse like a fire. We may not feel as grateful next week when I get a bill for the nice new carpet that was in my home for less than twelve hours and is currently sitting on my driveway "air-ing" out. Hm. I hope it doesn't rain.