The Great Flood of 2013

On Tuesday, we left for work and school as usual, about 8:30 a.m. When I returned after picking up Claire, our house was flooded.  I quickly found the source was a busted refrigerator line.

The culprit

I contacted neighbors and we had three shop vacs going within an hour.  Adam came home from work and one neighbor stayed and mopped the floor.  We realized to save the carpet, we'd have to remove the carpet pad.  So Adam ripped up the carpet and I hauled the soaked carpet pads out of the house.

We worked for two solid hours before someone mentioned calling the insurance company.  Adam called, and three hours later, we had professionals in the house.  Stanley Restoration came and pumped 100 gallons of water out of our home.  They also patiently answered questions posed by all four of us.  It was fascinating to watch them work with the water sensors and determine there was water in places we didn't even realize.  (The coat closet.  Who but a professional would have checked the floor in the coat closet?)

Each corner of half of our house looked like this.

I had to straddle fans to wash dishes and cook at the stove.

Woohoo!  Some of the fans were able to be removed.

Watching the work crew remove the parquet floor.

Our 1958 flooring is going bye bye!

They installed 18 industrial fans in our house and two giant dehumidifiers.  We had to move furniture around to get it off the wet floor.  They have been coming to our house daily to check the progress of the fans and test the moisture in the floors.  All conversations are conducted in yell-speak and the TV has to be turned on full-volume, so we just leave it off.

Currently, a work crew is using crowbars and mallets to remove the parquet floor in our back room.  One worker said the flooring was original to the house:  1958.

A few minutes ago I stood in the hallway to watch the workers and a piece of parquet hit me in the head.  Now I'm in the next room hiding.