Scott woke me up one Thursday morning, less than a week after we returned from 3 weeks in Texas, with concern in his voice. "Honey? You should come out here." I bolted out of bed and started sprinting to the living room (Scott had to stop me on the way and tell me to calm down, because I stood up too fast and got dizzy for second), wondering what I would find when I got there.
Squish.
A puddle of water appeared around my foot where I had unsuspectingly placed it on the carpet.
"Ummm, that's not supposed to happen."
Scott agreed with that statement, and I started looking around for the source of the water. My heart sank when I ultimately found it at the other end of the room, in the corner next to the front door. The carpet was like a swamp between that first wet step and the large puddle in the corner. The swamp continued into the next room, and became a lake when it reached the kitchen. I wasn't sure where to even begin the clean-up efforts.
After recovering from the shock, I got the largest old towel we had and started working on the kitchen, wringing it out in the sink when it reached saturation and then sopping up more water. Meanwhile, Jed had woken up so Scott took him out of his footed pajamas and dressed him in a shirt and pants, with no socks. My work in the kitchen took about 5 or 10 minutes, after which Scott and I considered our next step.
As it was 5:45 in the morning, we had no good way to obtain a wet/dry vac from any friends or neighbors, and my landlady wasn't answering her phone. All we had was a couple of old towels, which the swamp in our living room laughed at. But Scott had the brilliant idea of renting a steam cleaner from the grocery store - though removing water from your carpet isn't its primary purpose, it is a major part of its functionality. And Giant was totally open at 6am - so Scott set off to acquire a Rug Doctor.
We spent the next 3 hours or so vacuuming water up out of our carpet, about 30 gallons worth. My landlady (Deborah) returned my phone call and sent over the maintenance guy, Will (whom Jed ADORES) with a wet/dry vac to do what he could. Deborah called around and discovered that because of the cold snap, pipes had burst all over the DC area and all of the clean-up/restoration companies were booked until the following Tuesday. So she sprayed some air freshener to help with the smell that would inevitably come the next day and gave us her condolences. Other than that, there was not much we could do - we lit good-smelling candles, turned on our dehumidifier and fan, and waited.
On Tuesday January 14th, a bunch of guys showed up with tools of destruction and began attacking my apartment, while I frantically moved stuff out of their way. When they were done, we had no carpet and half of the drywall on the front wall was gone:
Jed wanted desperately to "help guys fix the wall", and I tried my best to keep him out from underfoot and move everything around as needed. It was no easy task. Before they left, the "guys" set up 9 industrial dehumidifiers and at least as many giant fans. The noise was like being inside a jet engine...absolutely unbearable. Jed and I went elsewhere for the afternoon, and when we returned home Scott and I decided there was no way we could stay at home overnight. We moved the rest of our stuff out of the living room (it ended up in our kitchen and our bedrooms, so we couldn't get to our food or our beds...another reason we couldn't stay there), and called the Dixons for a favor. They were still out of town for the holidays, so we asked if we could stay in their house while they were gone. They happily offered to overnight us their house keys, so we called the St. Clairs and begged to stay with them for a couple of days while we waited (we would have gone to them first, but they live an hour away and we still had work and other things planned near home). It didn't take much begging, as Jeff usually jumps at the chance to have us around after the kids go to bed so we can play Pinochle!
Jed really enjoyed playing with the St. Clair kids, and became particularly excited when he saw James (about 7 months older) using the toilet. He suddenly decided that wanted to use the potty also, and successfully went several times (though he quickly lost interest as soon as we weren't around James anymore). On one of the days we were at the St Clairs', it was Jenete's turn to teach Joyschool. A 4-year-old girl named Evelyn came over, and Jed became obsessed, following the little girl around everywhere and wanting to do nothing but hug her.
After letting the apartment dry out for a couple of days, Deborah and Will came over to seal the floor and get it ready for the carpet to be laid. We got the keys for the Dixons' house on Thursday and after some struggling with the top lock, finally got in. It was SO nice to be in a place where we weren't yelling over jet engine noises to talk to each other, inhaling mildewing carpet, or intruding on someone else's space and messing with their schedule. It wasn't our home, but it was temporarily our space where we could relax. And in the middle of such upheaval, that was a very welcome thing!
After staying at the Dixons' for a couple of days, the new carpet was finally installed and we were able to "move" back in. I say "move" because while the carpet had been installed, Deborah was unhappy with the installation quality and said the company might need to send someone out to rip half of it up and do it again. So we couldn't do much in the way of putting things back. We were so frustrated - all we wanted to do was put our stuff away and get back to our normal life! At this point it had been over a week since our apartment flooded. (We had discovered the reason, by the way: the lady who lived 2 floors above us went out of town and turned her heat off - not down but OFF - and when the weather turned suddenly cold, her pipes had burst and the water gushed down the walls and out into our apartment. Arrgh! It is so frustrating to suffer because of someone else's idiocy.) We put away as much as stuff as we could, and after a couple of days everything was worked out with the carpet company. On Tuesday morning Jed and I went to Massanutten to spend some time skiing with my dad, Debbie, Chuck, Laurie, and a couple of my dad's friends. After we returned, Scott and I spent the next couple weeks getting everything truly organized. We had taken the opportunity of having everything moved around to rearrange our furniture, and slowly de-junked as well. Our closets now look beautiful. At least some good came out of such an unwanted situation!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment