Our Flood!

We have had an incredible amount of rain and snow over the last two weeks... I am talking about a ton of precipitation! As I was leaving for work Wednesday morning, I thought to myself that we should check our basement because if we were ever going to have a flood, this would be the time. Since I was already in my car and on my way to work, I couldn't check. Well, at 8:00, Kevin woke up and checked the basement. We had an enormous flood! He immediately called our carpet cleaning friend, Home Depot, Lowes, and several rental companies trying to track down as many pumps and fans as possible. Several people in the area flooded, so a lot of places were all out. But, Kevin found enough to get us started in the cleanup process. Terry, our carpet cleaning friend, came right over and stayed for 5 hours that morning. He pumped 500-600 gallons of water out of our basement. At the same time, the sump pump was removing 1000 gallons per hour! The sump pump was basically just keeping the flooding from getting any worse because the water was coming in just as fast as it was being pumped out. Unfortunately for Kevin, our rental house next door also flooded, and it was worse than our house...I cannot even imagine. So, bless his heart, he had two houses to contend with. The carpet cleaner came back Wednesday evening to help Kevin some more, and stayed until midnight - now that is dedication! Of course, he has been at our house several times since the inital flood day and he isn't finished yet! We were fortunate that none of our furniture or belongings were damaged. Kevin even managed to save the girls' library that was set up in the basement. They had to pull up all of the carpet in the entire basement...all the way down to the cement floors! We will be replacing all of the padding, but plan on keeping the carpet. We are trying to dry this carpet out. Our guest bedroom carpet is propped up in the garage as we don't quite have enough space for everthing to dry out in here. Since we put the guest room carpet out in the garage, we piled as much furniture and belongings as we could into the guest room since that room is now dry (down to the cement floor, but dry nonetheless).

Before the flood...

After the flood...

Before the flood...

After the flood...

What's this you ask? MY GUEST ROOM CARPET HUNG OUT TO DRY IN THE GARAGE!

I did see some footage on CNN of midwest flooding. Let me assure, we have nothing to complain about here compared to a lot of people. On CNN, we saw a house floating down the river and crashing into a bridge...talk about devastation! We have our home, our safety, and we didn't lose and precious pictures or other memorabilia. We can get through this fiasco much easier than a lot of people.