Last night around 9:30pm, a pipe burst in our downstairs bathroom. Water shot out of the wall for about 15-20 minutes while Rob and I ran around like chickens with our heads cut off, looking for the main water shut-off valve. Rob finally was able to turn off the water supply under the toilet (after first shutting off the hot water heater instead) and we found ourselves in the middle of about an inch of standing water. It was in the bathroom, the living room, the kitchen, the master bedroom, master bath, my closet, three other closets, and the pantry. Basically the entire first floor of our house is hosed. We called a water damage service to come last night and they immediately began extracting the water and surveying the damage. We ended up checking into a hotel around midnight so that the technicians could continue cleaning up water, and spraying toxic anti-microbials. Cooper slept through the entire thing.Today the technicians began ripping up our laminate flooring, our baseboards, our cabinet kickboards, what little carpeting we have, and even an area rug. I've lost track of how many commercial grade fans and dehumidifiers are criss-crossing our floors. Our furniture has been moved all over the place, and it's basically like running an obstacle course just to try to get a glass of water.
Oh! And the dozens of fans and dehumidifiers are putting off so much heat that I'm afraid our next electric bill will deplete Cooper's non-existant college fund.
We are now living in our upstairs guestroom. The insurance claims adjuster won't be able to make it out here until Thursday, and assuming they cover all the damages, who knows how long it will take for everything to get replaced?
So that's the fun in our life. How about you?
Oh, and we still don't know where that main water shut-off valve is.
2 comments:
Gee, what a mess. Were you able to salvage all the pieces? Hope you get your flooring back in place. Out of curiosity, did you find that the water soaked through the flooring? 20 minutes doesn't sound like that long... \t
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Visit laminate flooring | gig8, yes?
Hi Tim! Not all of our laminate flooring was ruined, just the parts that were under water. The water only gushed for 20 minutes, then it sat standing for over an hour until the water extraction crew arrived. I don't know if the water soaked through, since the cleanup crew removed all of the damaged pieces. But the damage was evident to the finish. Pieces were beginning to buckle and appeared to be peeling up at the ends. The laminate in our bedroom was Lowe's Kronotex and had only been installed a year and a half ago, so we were really disappointed that some of those were damaged. Hopefully we can just replace the damaged boards in that room. However, our living room flooring was installed when we bought the house. We have no idea what brand or color the laminate was, so we'll have to replace the entire room there.
Thanks for stopping by!
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