Friday, April 12, 2013

april showers bring home disasters

It happened again.

The basement flooded.
Some of you will remember this happened to us exactly three years ago.
For us, April showers don't bring May flowers. It brings a flooded basement.
It was another freak happening: Brian woke up to find water in the 
basement and the sump pump not working. He discovered in the main circuit
breaker box, that the switch for the sump pump had tripped to "off". It
was the only switch that had done so. And why? No one seems to know.
So, here we go again with a restoration company and drying out the basement.


The owners of the restoration company - a family of 7 - worked their
tails off, carting load after load of  years of stuff that somehow accumulates
in basements, and stacking it all neatly in our garage.


 
 Some of the major furniture items were able to stay in the basement, like the
 couch, the table, and treadmill. The couch got a little bit of water on the bottom,
 but it's being dried out. All my bookcases were ruined though, and had to be
thrown out. Some books were ruined, too. The restoration people took our area
rugs and are treating them and drying them out in their warehouse. Hopefully,
they can be salvaged.


Not only is our garage filled, but the top of the bar has things piled
all over it, too. It's amazing how much "stuff" one accumulates after living
 in the same place almost 23 years.


They ran out of room to pile all my books, so some are piled in the living room.


Even the poor kitties are discombobulated. Normally, their cat boxes are
downstairs, so we had to bring them upstairs. I didn't exactly want a cat box
 in my living room, a bathroom, or our bedroom, so they went into the spare
 room/office.


Believe it or not, that's not even all the stuff we had in the basement.
There's also the unfinished part of the basement, AKA, the dungeon.
Huge Sterilite containers of out-of-season clothes, the cat tree, baby toys...


Shelves full of paint cans, tools, home repair stuff; a couple of
garment racks full of coats and sweaters due to lack of closet space.
Egads, how to start all over and clean all this stuff out and put it back together?
We sure have out work cut out for us.


But, that's not all. On top of the stove breaking the other day and having
to get a new one - which will be delivered on Tuesday - and now our
basement flooding, Brian went to open the garage door, and one of the
main springs broke. The garage door guy will be here Monday morning.
And if that's not enough, when the restoration man was here today to
check the humidity levels in the basement, he asked me if I knew that my
water softener was leaking from the bottom! I told him, no. He told me I'd
better call the water softener company immediately, as it could actually
explode if it malfunctioned. Talk about a high anxiety level! A serviceman from
the water softener company came out and looked at the softener and released
the pressure valve and turned the whole machine off. They will be installing
a new water softener on Monday.

Trying to keep a smile on my face and breathe. I know things could
be worse. We shall get through this. We somehow always do.


25 comments:

  1. Oh my Melanie. You have had a rough time. Maybe you should go to bed and pull the covers over your head for a while. Take care and good luck. J

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    1. Sounds like a great idea, Julie...it is 10:30 p.m. and I need to be up early tomorrow. So at least I'll get to pull the covers over my head for at least a little while. ;-)

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  2. This really has been a disaster for you, especially now that I see all the things you have in your basement...somehow I thought I was the only one with that much old stuff. Now is a good time to purge some of it. The restoration company sounds like a Godsend...carting all that stuff out for you. I hope this is the end of your troubles, seriously. I think I would have lost my mind.

    XO,
    Jane

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    1. Living in the same place for 23 years, you tend to accumulate waaay too much stuff. Major purging coming our way! We're hanging in there, somehow. Haven't lost our minds completely just yet!

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  3. Unbelievable . . . it is amazing how calm you seem . . . So, so sorry Melanie for all of this chaos, loss and mess you are dealing with . . .

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    1. Thanks, Lynne. Both me and my husband are actually pretty calm right now about all this. Sure, we're aggravated and a little stressed, but not too bad. It's all things that can be fixed and taken care of. I'm just dreading all the clean-up.

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  4. Oh no Melanie! I'm so sorry to hear about the flooding. That happened to my in-law's basement when they had a house in Canada -- all my stuff was stored there that I didn't bring to Kuwait and most of it dried and mildewed in the boxes so had to be tossed. Sometimes we have too much stuff and really just need to weed it all down. This sounds like that would be an opportunity to do just that. Wishing you all the best as you get it all sorted out. Take care, Tammy

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    1. Thanks, Tammy. Yeah, I'm dreading the clean-up.

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  5. So sorry to hear this. What a mess! I guess we all have great misfortune from time to time, but it's never fun and always stressful when it comes, especially in multiples. This too shall pass... I hope. Lots of deep breaths.

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    1. Thanks, Diane. I'm trying to hang in there!

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  6. Oh my goodness! When it rains, it pours! Bless your heart. I hope things soon gets back to normal!!

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  7. Oh, Melanie! Too much all at once! That's just crazy! So sorry that some of your things were damaged by the water. :-( And that you have such a huge clean up job to do. If I lived near you, I'd come and help.

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    1. That is so sweet of you to say. Thank you so much.

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  8. Melanie,
    This reminds a bit of our disaster with the Water Heater-during Christmas. Water is such a mess and can ruin so many things-sounds as though you have a method to recovery from the mess and are keeping calm.

    Thinking of you,
    Jemma

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    1. Home disasters are pretty awful, aren't they Jemma? Now I know why some people choose to rent!

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  9. Oh no! The fates have not been kind to you lately. I'm so, so sorry! Hopefully, all this will be fixed and you'll be free of worries and trouble for a long time. You've earned it!

    xo
    Claudia

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    1. Thanks for your support, Claudia. I agree - we've had more than our share lately!

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  10. When it rains, it pours. I'd have an electrician investigate that tripped circuit (but maybe not right now!)

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    1. That might not be a bad idea, Terri - it is perplexing! I even googled it and couldn't find an answer.

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  11. I hope nothing else goes wrong any time soon.
    Yikes!

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    1. It'd better not, Rhonda. We've had enough for a looong time!

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  12. Oh, you poor thing! Our basement has flooded a couple times due to freak things ... but ours isn't finished like yours. It's really more of a cellar. So sorry you have to go through all this. :(

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  13. The southern Detroit suburbs where we used to live were notorius for basement flooding, and believe me, we understand. Sorry all this stuff is happening at once!

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    1. Thanks, Robin. Yeah, the Chicago area is notorious for flooding, too!

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