Paula’s Butterfly Mind

Never a dull moment at my house! I sure know how to have a fun Friday evening! As if my flood-fun for January 2008 were not enough… somehow the in-line filter to my ice-maker broke open and flooded my kitchen on the first Friday evening of March 2009.  As soon as a few things settle, I’ll post photos… for enertainment, of course!   (rolling my eyes!)   

I was home, but I was relaxing in my room and watching the news, blissfully unaware that Lake Icemaker was filling my kitchen. It was also stealthily creeping into the carpet of my dining room, oozing under the walls and into the middle bathroom and into the living room and hallway carpet!  Lassie never came to get me… oh wait! I don’t have a dog!

The Story:
It was about 5:30 pm that Friday evening and I had just finished dinner. I was overcome by the urge to get a nice, relaxing cup of hot herbal tea. I got up, walked into the hallway on my way to the kitchen. Half way down the hallway my foot encountered, “Squish” in the carpet. I realized that I was also hearing a rushing noise… like water running. At first I thought it was the kitchen faucet and I wondered how the cats had managed to turn it on. I squished onward and rounded the corner into the kitchen… splash! I saw the faucet was not on and for a few seconds couldn’t figure out where the stupid water was coming from. Then it hit me, “The fridge! The icemaker! But how?” 

I splashed over to the fridge and began trying to roll the fridge out from the wall. It was resisting me! “Note to self: Fridge does not roll easily in ½ inch of water.” I struggled to roll the damned appliance forward. Then I realized that I had all these stupid, folded plastic & paper grocery bags stored beside the fridge… maybe they were impeding the progress. I began grabbing bags and tossing them into the dining room, out of the way… anywhere away from the water. When they were all gone, I began pulling at the fridge again.  At that point, I still didn’t know exactly WHERE the water was spewing from!!

At first, I could only get it out a foot or so… not enough. I pulled more, but the damned door kept coming open. Well, the bags weren’t the issue. I continued pulling. I only got it moved about another foot… and I tried to squeeze in between the fridge & cabinet. Nope, that wasn’t quite enough.  By then, I could finally see the water was coming from some part of the filter connected in the copper line to the ice-maker. 

Meanwhile, the water was surging out at full speed. I extracted myself from between the cabinet and fridge.  I wrestled the fridge forward another foot or so. I squeezed into the small space again… reaching… reaching… and finally grabbing the turn-off lever. It wouldn’t budge! I kept trying, but it was relentless and my fingers kept slipping violently off the wet lever and slamming into the edge of the water access wall-cut-out. I realized I would have to use a wrench, but where the hell was my small wrench? I pulled free from the skinny space and dashed to the place where I keep most of my tools… no wrench! What a time to chastise myself for not putting things back where they belong!!! All I could see of possible use was a pair of small, needle-nose pliers… not ideal, but better than nothing!

I splashed back to the refrigerator. I stretched and elongated myself into the thin space again and began using the pliers to grab at the lever and try to turn it 90 degrees to the off position. Dammed stubborn lever was only moving a degree or two at a time… barely slowing the water flow at all!  The pliers kept slipping off the wet lever but I kept on the attack… insisting that I would win! It seemed to take forever, but gradually, degree by frustrating degree… I finally got the last turn in and stopped the water flow!

I was exhausted, out of breath and ridiculously flustered. I knew I needed to call someone… Insurance people… who was my insurance again? What’s-their-name… and the clean-up place… whada-ya-call-it? I could not for the life of me think of the word “restoration” and I could not remember the name of the place that did such a great job last time. The only word that would come to my frustrated brain was “renaissance”… what the hell was that about?

I picked up the phone and called Mom. Moms somehow almost always have the answers! She answered and listened to my out-of-breath story and my plea for help. She said that they would call my insurance company, get a claim number for me and she would call Rockefeller’s Restoration for me and call me right back. I was so grateful! I hung up the phone and began the wrestling process of getting things out of the water path, as I didn’t even own enough towels to make a dent in soaking up this flood!

The Clean-up Process:
Over the course of the evening, I exchanged several phone calls with Mom and the restoration people who called to update me on their arrival time. They got there as fast as they could, but it took about 45 minutes. That’s what happens when you live on the west side of Albuquerque and about 15 miles from everyone! Especially when they are on-call and have to grab equipment before they can get there. By the time they arrived, the linoleum was no longer a lake. Most of the water had soaked into the surrounding carpeted areas and crept under the wall and into the middle bathroom, the living room and hallway. But they did arrive and vacuumed up the water, took photos, removed the effected carpet pad, and set up six industrial drying fans and 2 great-big dehumidifiers.  They left my house at about 9:30 pm. I was ready to collapse!  Those noisy hot machines ran for 4 and a half days. They generated plenty of heat & shattered the peace, but dried things out quite effectively!

My home heating system did not come on for 5 or 6 days, even though it got down to freezing outside!! I had to keep my bedroom door closed to shut out some of the noise and keep the temperature to a reasonable level. While the equipment was in place, the effected half of the house reached 86 at night and about 94 degrees during the day. By keeping my door closed, it only reached 79 degrees in the bedroom in the afternoons, and down to about 69 in the mornings. Of course it was too soon in the year to turn on my air conditioning, because it’s an evaporative cooler system and it has not yet been summer-ized. The outside water line to the unit would still freeze at night. What a dilemma! haha No biggie… It’s character-building, right? But oh – how nice it was to get some quiet once the fan club was removed!

The Recovery Process:
I learned that elongating and stretching ones-self to reach into areas too small for one’s body can cause you to pull ribs out of place and create some bruising in the areas that got squished!  Damn!  I didn’t think of that in the flash of panic to stop the water!    The insurance company people have been great. Once again, I chose the service that allows me to choose the contractors. I chose the same ones who did such a great job for me back in January/February of 2008.

I had to take a  long lunch to meet with the restoration guys to have the drying equipment removed. They also had to remove the linoleum (which was curling up) from my kitchen and bathroom.  On other days I had to arrange to meet with the other vendors to get estimates for the work to be done. In addition to the kitchen and bathroom linoleum being totaled, the dining room and living room carpet was fraying and was unable to be re-stretched. So that also had to be replaced.  Well… the living room carpet is connected to the hallway carpet, so guess what?  That has to be replaced too. Geeze!  Good thing I wasn’t too terribly attached to the stock linoleum and carpet that came with this house!!! 

Baseboards had to come up to dry things out, so those needed to be replaced and painted. It turns out that when baseboards are involved like that, the insurance company wants the corresponding walls to also be painted… and of course the walls adjacent and connected as well. They want your paint to match. After the new flooring is installed, there has to be caulking and touch-ups. It’s crazy! And this was only the first phase; week number one of the mayhem!!!  Since everything will be so torn-up anyway… perhaps I’ll look at some upgrades, if I can afford it. 

I truly hope and pray that nothing else with my house breaks, busts, floods or get stolen!!! This is killin’ me! The stress of recovering is ridiculous! This is not how I would have liked to re-done the floors!! I would have much preferred to have done it gradually, taking my time when I’m ready to do it.

There will be more to come as things unfold and happen. Stay tuned to this same bat-channel! Photos to come!
I’m already working on the “Chapter Two” of this adventure. 

Be well… and dry!
~Paula