Yesterday was an expensive day...

So, here's how yesterday went down for the Richards family: Cort came upstairs just after waking up and I was getting ready in my bathroom. We chit-chatted for a second and then he said to me: "Caleb had an accident downstairs RIGHT on the carpet!" I told him that this was impossible because Caleb sleeps in a pull-up. Cort assured me that the pull-up had leaked and that Caleb had indeed had an accident on the carpet. At this point, I was slightly annoyed. Our mornings around here are fairly stressful when everything goes perfectly. Five little people to get fed, dressed, combed and brushed leaves little to no time for extra clean-ups or problem solving. So, I finished getting myself dressed and then went downstairs to make the boys' beds and assess the damage. I knew I was in trouble when I could tell the minute I hit the bottom of the stairs that the carpet outside our mechanical room (clear on the other side of the family room) was wet. On closer inspection I realized that cute, sweet Cort had grossly overestimated the size of Caleb's bladder. It was not, in fact, a leaky pull-up but a leaky 50 gallon water heater that had caused the sloshy, spongy carpet outside his bedroom. Sigh. I think I would have preferred the leaky pull-up.

Anyway, Spencer was totally unavailable by phone and my parents were out of town so I was flying solo! I did the best I could: called a plumber, started trying to soak up water with towels and towels and more towels. Rotating them through the dryer as quickly as I could. Finally the plumber showed up around 3:00 and replaced the water heater for a mere $700. Yikes. Then he told me I would be foolish to not have a disaster clean-up service come in and start tearing out carpet pad and drying the carpet, drywall and studs that were soaked. So, I did that too. They showed up 20 minutes after I placed the call (almost as good as 911, huh?) and hooked up their fans. I think we have 8-9 going right now. The workman told me the fans are $25/day each and that we'd need to run them for 3-4 days. You do the math. I tried not to cry or put my fist through the wall in front of this poor gentleman but I was BUMMED! After he left, I checked to see if the fans are, in fact, gold leafed or diamond studded since for that kind of money, they definitely ought to be. But, no. They are just ugly, industrial fans and they are LOUD.

So, once the fans are unplugged sometime this weekend we'll still have to replace the pad and re-lay the carpet and then raid the kids' piggy banks to cover the ridiculous but unavoidable expense of our mini-disaster. Oh well. Life marches on.

MORAL OF THE STORY: The plumber told me that all of this could have easily been avoided had one of two things happened: 1. the builders of the home didn't get the slope of the floor in the mechanical room right when they poured the concrete and the water that leaked from the water heater ran perfectly AWAY from the drain in the center of the floor. Go figure. Check the pitch of your concrete floor wherever your wather heater is and make sure it's correct. If it's not (like ours) you need to 2. caulk the perimeter of your mechanical room to make it water tight. Easy. Inexpensive. Would've saved us big time bucks and hassle. We'll be doing that as soon as everything dries out.