If You Take the Kids to Friendly's (Part 2)

If  you are hoping it was all a dream…

You would be wrong.

You would wake up the next morning, almost forget what transpired the night before and before you know it your sock-covered foot would be wet as you stepped from your bedroom to the hallway. *Ew*

***ooops, almost forgot. After your husband went to bed after the big clean-up you stay up since the baby that was asleep in the carrier on your back through the clean-up is now wide awake with no hope of closing his eyes any time soon.  As your eyes begin to droop aroung 2AM you hear an earily familiar sound of “water hitting the ground” coming up the stairs, your have a mini-freak out as you run down the stairs thinking “Oh please, not again” but realize the water is hitting the ground in the laundry room!  You see what no one realized is that during the clean-up as the sopped up water was being dumped down the slop-sink there was nothing in the drain to stop the debris and it had clogged up the drain AND the home-water-softener had assumed it’s back-wash schedule… do you see where this is going? So the back-wash cycle began and it drains through the slop-sink, but since the drain was blocked it filled the sink and spilled out over the top. Fun, isn’t it? I guess maybe that was why my socks were wet.***

When your socks are wet you go back in your room, remove ithem and toss themon the laundry hamper and put on your “gardening” sandals since they make more sense today.  When you place the socks on the hamper you realize that last night you placed all the wet clothing items you found on the laundry room floor into the wash basin but couldn’t start laundry since that breaker was off until it dried out.  When you go down to the laudry room to access the situation *again* you realize that even though you *thought* you shop-vac-ed up all the water, your footsteps are still making the dreaded *slosh* sound. Ugh!

Since your footsteps are still making that *slosh* sound your husband that thankfully works from home (but can’t do that if there is no internet connection and the computer stuff has not been able to started up just yet) and he can pull up the carpet upstairs and down in the areas that were water-logged.  Once he pulls up the carpets it is easy to see that the mess is going to take a little more energy to clean up.  He will then proceed to run out to Ben’s Rental and rent an industial turbo drier to put under the carpeting.  When he returns he rips out the carpet padding since it is pretty much not doing anything but stinking right now.  After the padding is removed you realize that this job won’t get finished today… you’ve just walked right into a home renovation without even knowing it.

After your engineer-husband looks at all the factors (and makes a spreadsheet, since he is an engineer and he likes those things) you both quickly realize that this is not going to be cheap, but for just a few hundred dollars more than the cost of the replacement padding and equipment rental (to steam clean the carpets and tools to re-lay them) you can replace the carpets upstairs (which happens to be ugly and gross, we do have 5 children after all) with laminate flooring, which would look so much better anyway and would stand up to the kids… and the cat… and the dog.

Sooooo, since you are in the process of getting “debt-free” your husband seeks councel from our elders to help decide what would be our wisest move.  It doesn’t take much time before we are given the go-ahead for what seems to be the smartest investment, a new floor that will thankfully not set us back more than a month in the process of paying of our debts.

When your husband brings home the new floors you will both be happy to have this project to work on together and he will get right to the work of pulling up the carpets.  The kids will think this is fun and they will help by using pliers to pull out any staples and padding left behind.

As the progress continues you will get more excited.

The basement carpet has been steam-cleaned and re-layed and look just as good as new. (Seriously, my husband is THE man) Each night your husband pulls up a bit more of the carpet and you get another step closer to new floors.

Then he pulls up the carpet in the dining room…

Once again your heart sinks, this isn’t getting any better it is geetting worse.

You see, once he pulls up the carpet in the dining room he will quickly see that there is water damage at the sliding doors going out to the deck.  Hmm, that’s not from the toilet overflowing… he’s just uncovered old damage. Fun. Well, the door was on it’s way out (planned to replace next year) so you look into viable options for replacement, no sense in installing a new floor that will be ruined the next time rain falls. He will find doors that will work and he will have our tech-guy help him remove the old door to get ready to install the new one. After they remove the old door they will see that the damage is worse than you thought…

(Sorry, the oldest kidlet just got home, hungry mouths are asking for a snack. Part 3 to come, this is sooo far from over.)