The Great Flood

Well...so technically it wasn't a flood...and it wasn't so great. Let me start over, last night as we headed downstairs to the basement to enjoy a relaxing evening eating popcorn and watching American Idol, we discovered that our basement had "flooded". Worse yet...it had probably happened Monday when we had quite a bit of rain. So that means it had been sitting down there for 2 days...grrreeaattt. ;) After standing there in shock, we started taking things upstairs to the garage. Thankfully we only had about 1 1/2 inches of water, so nothing was damaged. My parents came over and helped us get everything moved upstairs. There were a few big items that we left in the basement, but we put pieces of 2x4's underneath them to at least get them off the wet carpet.

Our full garage

Then this morning we called our insurance company who gave us the name of a carpet cleaning company they recommended. Upon talking with them, we agreed to let them take care of the mess for a few reasons: 1.) Drew is leaving early Friday morning to head to Texas for Brian's bachelor party, which means I'd be left to do quite a bit of the work, 2.) the water's already been sitting down there for a few days so we want to get it cleaned up as soon as possible, 3.) it would take at least a small army to get the wet carpet out of there, and 4.) we don't have a clue what to do. Plus we were very pleased with the quote they gave us, and we just wanted to get this taken care of, especially with two young kids - one being a VERY curious toddler. They said they'd be here in an hour and that it would only take 2 hours to soak up as much of the water from the carpet as they could, rip up the carpet and pad, discard the pad outside, and put fans down there to help it dry. Then another guy will come early next week to install a new pad and reinstall our carpet (thankfully it was salvageable!), and the carpet cleaning company will come back next Friday to clean the carpet and stairs.

We also borrowed a dehumidifier from a friend of ours to help dry up the basement.

Here's our beautiful lawn ornament. I've thought about possibly making that a permanent fixture in our yard. Haha...thankfully the "special" trash pick-up is every 2nd Tuesday of the month, which is this coming Tuesday. Yay! So it won't be out there too long.

What an adventure! This has at least made us more aware of the possibility of flooding in the basement. Drew went out this afternoon and bought a water alarm to put next to the sump so we can at least be warned the next time this happens.