Today is my Birthday! Woot woot! But the only thing I can think about is what I came home to discover last night. We have had rain since Monday and some really bad storms came through before I got home and dumped buckets of water on us! When I pulled into my driveway there was literally a stream running through the yard! After getting soaked getting out of the car we ran inside and that's when all the fun began ::sarcasm::
About a month ago the garage had gotten water in and the carpet by the basement door got really wet. It took about 3 weeks of fans and dehumidifiers to finally salvage it. As we walked in the door, which our house is a split foyer, Hailey went to the last step to the basement and touched the carpet and said "oh no it's wet again". I immediately dropped my stuff by the door and checked it and sure enough is was saturated. As soon as I stepped down on it the water came out from under the carpet and went over top my toes in my flip flops. I opened the garage door and there was at least an inch of water in the garage. I called Kenny which was a very unpleasant phone call and after telling him what I was seeing he decided he needed to leave work. After getting off the phone with him I went back into the basement to see how much of the carpet was wet. I got to the entrance of the laundry room and there was about 4" of muddy water on the floor of the laundry room. PANIC! Then I walked further into the big living room in the basement and the water was just soaking through the carpet. EVERY inch of carpet was wet. Outside the glass sliding doors was about a foot of more muddy water.
I called my friend's husband who came to help. I quickly got my rain boots on so I could down in the basement and see what needed to be done. When he got here we started bucketing out the water outside the glass door. The neighbor behind us also came over and started to help. Kenny made home about two hours after I had called him and we all started trying to get the water to stop coming in. We were able to dump buckets upon buckets of water to get the water level lower then the door. The yard was flooded and so Kenny started digging in the drain fields. We ended up with three big shop vacs trying to suck up the water from the garage and the basement, but it literally was just getting more and more wet. Kenny pulled up part of the carpet by the stairs and water started rushing onto the floor and out into the garage. David and Kenny started pulling boxes out of the crawl space underneath the steps to find where the majority of the water was coming in. Under the steps is a concrete slab with a huge crack in it. So there is a crack in the foundation of the house. All the water in my flooded yard was literally being sucked into the house the more we vacuumed. Needless to say at that point there was nothing more we could do until it stops raining and the yard pretty much drains because it's just going to keep coming in.
From the time I got home, until about 2 am this morning, when we finally got to bed, I cried. It was like once the tears started I couldn't make them stop. I woke up this morning after 2.5 hours of sleep to get ready for work. My eyes were almost swollen shut from crying so much and I am beyond exhausted. Our basement was used for storage for all the boxes I haven't unpacked and most of Hailey's toys were down there. We have some furniture down there and the computer and printers. Pretty much anything touching the carpet is wet. All the stuff in the bottom boxes has water in them. We need to bring everything up and out of the basement upstairs so that all the carpet can be torn up in the entire basement. Not to mention the foundation is going to have to be fixed. We are looking at a few thousand dollars to fix that and redo the flooring. Not to mention all the stuff that is ruined in the basement and garage.
Believe me I know that it could have been way worse. I know that people have lost EVERYTHING due to major flooding from storms. I know that these were only inches of water when others have had several feet of water in their house. But I can't help but want to cry every time I think of the basement. It's overwhelming and going to require money we don't have. We don't have flood insurance since we don't live in a flood zone, so insurance isn't going to be able to help us. The whole situation sucks all around. Plus the whole thing of bringing all those boxes upstairs and then figuring out what is now trashed due to the water damage.
This was supposed to be an exciting day and an exciting week! I have been looking forward to it so much! But now it's just a lot of chaos and stress.
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