Homeowner Disaster

2009's Super Bowl Sunday will be forever etched in my mind as the day the garage rained. Yep, you read that right. It was raining in our garage. Our kitchen faucet got left on this afternoon. Kind of a long story about how that happened, but let's just say neither of us blatantly left the water running. Of course the sink also had to have assorted dishes and plastic ware in it which led to one of the items blocking the drain. Spontaneous pool party in the kitchen followed not too long after. Meanwhile, we're having a merry ol' time over at Hobie's place for his annual Super Bowl party. We were gone 5, maybe 6 hours. Plenty of time for the waterfall to do its damage.

We first discovered something was amiss when we pulled into the driveway and opened the garage door. We were momentarily shocked to discover water come rushing out of the garage. B raced in to shut off the water main while my mind raced trying to figure out what I was seeing and where it was coming from. At first I thought the garage freezer somehow defrosted and was leaking all over. But then my eyes traveled upwards to discover the water raining down from the ceiling. B ran upstairs, and I followed behind to discover the waterfall coming from the sink, flowing over the cabinets and flooding the hardwood floor. The floor which was soaking up the water and spitting it out the other side by way of the garage ceiling.

I think I know what shock feels like. I got all weak feeling. I thought I was going to throw up. I just wanted to sink to the floor and start crying. Luckily B leaped to action and asked me to tend to Caiden while he tended to the mess in the kitchen. After I got the boy settled to sleep, I came downstairs and made a call to the insurance company. They got the claim started but couldn't tell me if this damage would be covered. Gee, thanks for being so helpful. I really feel like I'm in "good hands" right now. Not. After I got off the phone, I joined B in the garage to begin the hours long process of going thru all the water damaged items. As much as all of this SUCKS, we really were pretty lucky in the personal items department. Not too many things were destroyed. The major items that did suffer some sort of damage included my wedding dress (this is exactly why I didn't want to store it in the garage, altho the box it was in took the brunt of the moisture), the futon, bookcase, some chairs, papers and a few books. Considering all the stuff we do have down there, it could have been much MUCH worse. So I am thankful that we at least didn't lose too many precious items to water damage.

However, I am very nervous about how much this is going to cost us to repair. Undoubtably, we'll have to at least get the kitchen floor redone or repaired and probably rip out the ceiling in the garage and have that redone as well. Who knows how much damage has been done to the subfloor and the beams in the garage ceiling. I really really hope insurance will be able to cover a lot of this. Ug. What timing for this to happen. Now this will delay us getting the house on the market even further. Welcome to February. GRRRRR!