Yeah, that's not my basement. But that's not too far off from what my basement looked like yesterday.Picture this; a cozy, quiet Sunday morning. A typical New England Nor'easter going on outside with rain and wind so loud, it woke me up in the middle of the night. No problem, it's Sunday, my day off, and with a break from the daily hustle and bustle we are having a quiet Sunday morning breakfast as a family in the kitchen. I decide to go water the plants. As I do so, I am gazing out the windows at the large puddles that have formed in my back yard.
Then it hits me.
Did anyone check the basement? I have lived in this house for 9 years and we have never had water in our basement from rain. We have a super-duper, heavy duty sum-pump (is that what it's called?) so we have been very lucky, so far. Not today, not this day. That photo above is almost exactly what we found when descending the stairs to the basement.
All I can tell you is that My Guy is my hero and I am brilliant for snagging him for my future husband, because he completely took charge. Let's just say that within four hours I had almost every drop of water out of the basement and four guys here ripping up carpets and stacking trash in the garage when no one could even get the Fire Department to help them. From what the Fire Department told us, it became a game of inches and he with the highest water total took priority. Try to call someone to help? Forget it. The town next to us was shutting down flooded roads, evacuating apartment complexes and taking people out on the lift of a front end loader.
The forecast is calling for rain all day today and tomorrow. We made it through the night dry, thank God. I've got the day off today so I will be holed up in the basement trying to salvage and restore whatever I can.
This definitely sucks, but I am grateful that is the most of it. Thousands of people in my state are without power and some have worse flooding than just a basement. I'm hoping the exercise equipment will be ok and so far the biggest loss has been my NEW ipod, which was on the floor in that room. Most of the important, irreplaceable stuff like photos, was off the floor on shelves in bins, so I think we were lucky.
Can you say, "Extreme Basement Makeover?" Where's Ty Pennington when you need him?
15 comments:
Be careful of the mold possibility. We had that in the Midwest when I was a kid - the move to the burbs did not take into account how all the building would effect the area water habits & until they fixed that this happened every year.
There are ways to deal with the possibility of mold, but start asap.
Oh, Girl! I am sorry for you. That nor'easter was a real bear-cat. It had me stuck in NY on Saturday when they cancelled all the damn LGA flights. Hope your basement returns to normal soon.
And what really stinks is that you lost another hour of sleep because of the time change.
Too bad the Fire Dept couldn't help. That would have made for some fun pix.
mold kilss... or was that crack kills... oh well mold in crack kills I bet.
clean up on isle one please...
Yikes. The thing that bothers me is that you say you've never had a problem before, and now you do. Someone needs to check that sump pump, because it certainly wasn't working . . . blown fuse on it, motor died, something.
We had just re-done our basement, a few years ago, when we got a torrential downpour that filled up the backyard. Water filled up and put pressure on one of the basement window wells (unfortunately, one that was invisible from the inside, having been walled over, years before), and broke through it. Imagine a sheet of Va. red clay muddy water, streaming in, in a 3-inch deep flood, over brand new off-white carpeting . . .
Yeah, not good. The joys of homeownership.
And yes, your guy is a keeper ;-).
XO
yeah, see now. . . that's why you're getting married right there!
cause within four house Your Guy had it under control!!
that's awesome!!
So sorry about your basement! We had that happen once and from then on everything was elevated up off the floor.
We got 6" of rain here in ONE day last week. Yeah, my basement was wet, too....
You owe Mr. Guy a BJ, HJ, RH, or TF or all of the above.
Oh Candy! At first I thought that was a picture from the Titanic movie.
There's nothing else to say but ((((HUGS))))
Bleach, bleach, and bleach.
Fans, fans, and more fans.
good thing you got it dry, but like everyone else said, beware of mold.
Funny, when I heard about the storm, I thought, "Man, I hope Candy's okay."
I feel for ya...that really sucks.
I’m so sorry Candy. That’s kind of like what we went through during Christmas…you know, when we were supposed to be in Paris…. Leaking roofs and flooding basements (or houses) suck!
Sump pump Candace. If you dry out thoroughly every hidden corner then mold should not be a problem but it has to be thorough.
Man that sucks because I bet if you look at the county plat you don't live in a flood plain. I think that climate change is very real and that this is the early results of it coming home to roost.
Stay dry kiddo and look to see what and if there are any drainage's you could install on your property to carry the water away from the house (ie french drains)
Given the rain I experienced a couple of weeks ago and I know talking to friends in your (relative) neck of the woods that last week was bad I'm not surprised to hear this...
Er shall I tell you that in England it has been beautiful spring days for a week or so now :-)
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