So, last Thursday as I came home, I heard a strange noise in the house. I couldn’t quite decide what it was, and since it’s rather chaotic when I get home, what with the dogs barking and the child laughing & yelling, I didn’t investigate immediately as I would have if I was alone. About 5 minutes later, I went back to the washer/dryer area, and there was that sound again. I turned on the light, and the globe was full of water. Uh oh. With great dread, I realized we had a burst water pipe in the ceiling. We had experienced one sometime in ’09, so I recognized the signs immediately.

Panic! I’ve got water inside an electrical light fixture! I’ve got water leaking somewhere in my ceiling! Holy moly! Called John, he wasn’t available. Called my dad, he was in the shower! My mom was shouting to him “what does she do?” We decided I would shut off the electric to the house and the water main. Thankfully, when our water pipe burst last year, John had a quick shut-off lever installed. Something good came out of it, I suppose.

Then, I got hold of the plumber and begged them to come (of course at the emergency rate) right away. Spoke to John, he was headed home. Melody had no idea what was happening, but was excited we were going to have pizza. Sigh.

Hundreds of dollars later, the pipe was fixed and the plumber left.

The next day, two of our three toilets didn’t work. I had to have the plumber back out to fix them. As it turns out, when galvanized pipe gets old, it rusts from the inside out, and that rust travels down the line and clogs everything in its way. Just like a blood clot in an artery. With all the banging on the water pipes to fix them, that is exactly what happened.

By Monday, we had the musty smell of damp wallboard. Oh great. Numerous people suggested we find out if it would be covered under our homeowners insurance (it is) and they sent an adjustor out to review the damage. Hey, guess what? That water that we thought had dried up never really did!

My wood floors have been ripped up – there were puddles of standing water underneath – and I now have 10 blowers and 2 gigantic dehumidifiers in my house. The damage went everywhere. If you’ve been in my home, picture the entire back hallway, the bathroom, the closet of my guest room, the powder room in the front and my living room – which shares the wall with the bathroom. Oh, and I have huge holes cut into my ceilings where they fixed the pipe.

Tomorrow, more water clean up, some other person coming to check for asbestos since they will have to cut the drywall to repair/replace it.

The good news? Right at this moment I can’t think of any, but at least we don’t have the hideous 70s era faux wood vinyl flooring that was under my wood floors, right?