Many of you may have heard about it already, but at the beginning of August, just as school was starting, we had a really heavy rain and one of our guest rooms flooded. The water gathered and puddled against the brick for so long, that it seeped through the brick/mortar, into the house, wet the slab, soaked through the carpet padding, and finally into the carpet.
I've decided it was by the Lord's design that we decided that the room needed to be cleaned out. It had been an office/exercise room with an elliptical machine, a weight bench, and a set of weights. We had just gotten rid of the exercise equipment the weekend before, and realized that there was way too much junk in there. So, Jed went back to begin cleaning things out while I was busy doing something else in the house. He noticed that the carpet was damp and called me in there because he assumed that Hammie had used the bathroom in there. We started feeling around and moving things out of the way, and realized it was wet all the way into the corner. I decided there was NO way Hammie could possibly have had that much fluid in his system, recently enough for it to still be wet, so we started assuming the worst... Finally, I couldn't stand it, so I grabbed the corner of the carpet and pulled it up. That is when we found out that the entire pad and even the foundation of the house was wet!
We started moving EVERYTHING out of the room right then (including Jed's record collection, which was mostly soaked).
Jed called Jonathan (his cousin/our insurance agent) to see what we should do after that. He said to take pictures, then go ahead and pull back the portion of the carpet that was wet and to try to dry it out with fans overnight. He said he would check out our homeowner's policy and get back with us in the morning. So, we brought in a couple of chairs from the deck and draped the soaked carpet and padding over them, with fans blowing all over the room trying to dry it out (it smells pretty bad at this point).
Jonathan called the next morning and informed us that our homeowner's policy did not, in fact, cover floods caused by standing water (from outside). If a toilet had overflowed and flooded the house, it would have been covered, but we would have needed a separate flood policy to cover what happened to us. :(
So, we sucked it up and just decided to bite the bullet and purchase all new carpet for the rest of the house (bedrooms, closets, and hall). We had talked about doing it before, but we just didn't "need" it, so we hadn't done it. This, we figured, was a good reason. We shopped around a little, and found what we wanted, for a decent price, that was in stock, that could be installed before we went back to school (with students), so we did it. We also went ahead and decided to have a french drain put in the yard. We had never had problems before with standing water, but we certainly were NOT going to put in new carpet, just to have the house flooded again!
Needless to say, I did NOT get the type of birthday presents I was hoping for, but I got a new drain in the yard and new carpet in the house.. Happy Birthday to me!!! The drain really helps my peace of mind whenever we get a heavy rain, so I'm glad we went ahead and did it, even though the timing wasn't the best. :)
