Gettin' things back to normal

About two weeks ago, I left the house at about 1:30 p.m. for an appointment. I was only gone about 45 minutes. When I got home, my husband called me to ask me something and while I was on the phone with him, I kept hearing what sounded like water running somewhere. Well, this sound is typical because when we run our underground sprinklers, it makes this same noise, so I wasn't too alarmed. However, I thought it was kinda strange that it would be on at this time of day. So, out of curiosity, I went to check and make sure there wasn't something running downstairs (i.e. toilet, faucet, etc.) totally not expecting to find anything....I still thought it was the sprinklers running.

I'm still on the phone with my husband when I walk into the hallway downstairs and I see water coming out of the closed bathroom door and the carpet is soaked!!! I tell my husband "OH MY GOD THERE'S WATER IN THE BASEMENT!!!!" He says "I'll be right home!"

In the meantime, I knew I had to get the main water shut-off turned off, and it's in the bathroom, so I open the door and water just pours out of the room! It was about 6 inches deep in there with the door closed, so of course when I opened the door it came rushing out into the hallway. I notice when I get to the shut-off where the water is coming from.....the sprinkler pump! It was just gushing out the end! I got the water turned off and went back out and shut the door to try to contain the water that was left in the bathroom, but it was still seeping out around and under the door.

Our basement consists of a bathroom, bedroom/office, furnace room, a hallway, storage room and a large family room......all but the family room and half of the storage room was affected by the water. It was a mess! My husband used the shop-vac and got a ton of water out of the carpet (it's a 10 gallon shop-vac and he dumped it about 15 times over the course of 3 days!!!) We had to rent these big fans to blow under the carpet and a commercial size dehumidifier to help get rid of all the moisture before mold started to grow. It has been a HUGE pain in the butt. After about 5 days, the moisture is finally gone and we can start getting things put back. The carpet guys are coming tomorrow to re-install some of the carpet and re-stretch the other carpet that didn't get pulled out. Then we have to re-paint some of the walls that got wet. Then we'll start putting everything back in it's place.

We've got a few days of work ahead of us, but at least it's starting to look like we can see the light at the end of the tunnel. All in all this "mishap" will have cost us about $1000.00.....not a good thing when we're only 10 weeks away from Christmas!!

I just have to thank God (thank you God!) that it happened when it did. My husband told me a day or two after it happened that usually he turns the water off when we go on vacation, but when we went to Branson back in August, he DIDN'T turn the water off.....just imagine how big of a mess THAT would've been had it happened while we were gone for a WEEK!!! This was MINOR compared to what it could've been!