The Great Flood!

Two men in their 60's were sitting next to each other on a Florida beach. One guy asks the other, "So, just visiting?" The other man replied, "No, I'm retired. I had a business and it burned down." The second man said, "Same with me, only mine was a flood." Perplexed, the other man asks, "How do you start a flood?"

Not too long ago, we had a flood in our house. We live in a two story town house, so of course the flood took place upstairs. I only noticed it because there was water dripping from the chandelier above the dining table. I went upstairs and, sure enough, one of the toilets decided it wasn't going to stop running. It ran longer than Eric Snowden.

Fortunately, there was no sewage, just water, and lots of it. I turned the water to the toilet off and since we lease to buy, I called the landlord. These are the times when it's great to be able to make a call and unless it's intentional, it costs nothing. Sweet!

In this case, it was not so sweet. The maintenance guy wasn't going to be able to get there until the following day. His daughter was getting married, I think, or it was some other ridiculous excuse. Clearly, his priorities were not in order. I even told him that there was a 50% chance the marriage wouldn't work out anyway, but he was adamant about going. Some people are just not flexible.

Since you can't leave wet carpet and padding remain that way overnight because of potential mold issues, I had to peel up the carpet in the hallway and in our bedroom. Pulling the carpet was time consuming but not much of a physical strain. It was kind of tricky because you can't just yank on it; you have to cut the seams so you don't create a brand new seam.

That took longer than a swim to Cuba. I finally finished with the carpet and now had to remove and throw away the soaked padding. I don't know if you realize that soaked carpet padding is extremely heavy. It weighed more than Mike and Molly combined. No kidding.

To make matters worse, I had a severely torn rotator cuff in my right shoulder, so picking up the water soaked padding and throwing it out was not only a long process, it was also very painful. Nevertheless, it had to be done.

After that was completed, I had to mop up as much of the water on the now wooden floor. That also took a long time. Once that was finished, I set up a couple of fans to run until the wood was dry. It took two days. Finally, the carpet installation team came and fixed it.

I think I would much rather have a flood in the basement. Since I don't have anything on the floor in the basement, mainly because I don't have a basement, but if I did, I would need only a shop vac to get the job done. No carpet or padding to deal with.

After all the work was finished, I was sitting downstairs, finally relaxing when I looked up and saw water bubbles held only by the paint. I knew I had to drain them so they wouldn't cause another mold problem. I didn't want to repaint, so I got a container to catch the water and made one needle puncture in the bubble.

I don't know if you're aware that the bubble is much like the tip of an iceberg. As soon as I popped it, it was like a water piñata. The flood gates opened and I had to get more containers. Great, now I had paint just hanging down from the ceiling in several places.

I had to wait for that watery wood to dry out too. I was never so happy to see a work crew arrive to fix everything. Now we no longer use running water for the toilets. We refill the tanks with buckets of water. I'm not taking any chances.

See you tomorrow.

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