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?
