So a week ago Friday hubby finished the living room. No pictures of the finished product yet. I feel like such a slacker, but once you hear this story, I'm hoping you'll understand.
Let me start by saying that Seattle has seen nearly 5 1/2 inches of rain so far this month and over 2 inches alone fell this past Sunday.* OK, so crazy rain in Seattle is not out of the norm this time of year, but that's a LOT of rain.
I got up early on Sunday morning to prep for our annual tree trimming party. I started some laundry, put the cheesecake in the oven, made some coffee, and finally woke hubby up so he could run and pick up the bagels. When he came back I asked him to check out the basement because I had spotted a little water on the floor at the base of the stairs (on the West/back side of the house). I followed him downstairs and was pointing out the small areas of water. He proceeded toward East area of the basement (under the front side of the house) where we both spotted the pool of standing water. Half of the basement was covered in about three inches of water.
Hubby went into action like super hero! He threw off his jacket, picked as much as he could off the floor, and started Shop-Vac-ing up the water. He dumped about a gazillion 5-gallon buckets of water in our laundry tub.
It's a known fact that I don't handle crisis very well (hysterical laughter and such), so I just went upstairs and kept prepping for the party. I know, crazy, but the party must go on. Not long after, I heard our neighbors helping hubby assess the situation. Apparently he went across the street to ask for help removing the wet carpet.
I have to take a side note to explain how AMAZING our neighbors are. Every time we have an problem, need a tool, or break something, it feels like they are on standby with the perfect fix. Sunday was no different. Hubby knocked on the door, a little whimpery, asking for a hand with the rain-soaked carpet. They spent the next 2-3 hours helping hubby. This included hauling dank and soggy stuff out of the basement, digging trenches in the side yard and loaning us this magic concrete putty that plugged several cracks in the foundation that were the culprit of our own little Sunnyside swamp.
It was exactly 1pm when hubby heard the sound of multiple footsteps upstairs. Thankfully, he was at a stopping point in the cleanup and came up to take a shower and participate in the party.
The rest of the story is pretty simple. We had a party. It was fun. The neighbors made it (after they got cleaned up too)! It wasn't until the party was over and everyone was gone that hubby and I went downstairs and I nearly fell into a puddle of tears at the site of what was our basement.
There are no pictures of the flooding, the cleanup effort, or the party. But I was able to stay home on Monday and help hubby with more cleanup. Check in tomorrow when I'll post the basement demo pictures and the insane wall issue that we found!
*hubby commented on the fact that I was researching all the rain stats as I was writing this. I said, "Dude, I'm a serious journalist!"
No comments:
Post a Comment