An Eventful Week

The finished product

On Tuesday we woke up to an unpleasant surprise. Alison found a puddle of water in the gym in our basement. We quickly inspected the area around the puddle and couldn't identify a leak. We thought that Tex must have peed (it was too large of a puddle to suspect CC). It would have been unusual for him to pee in the house, but it seemed like the only probable explanation. We have a rubber floor our gym, which made the cleanup easy. We quickly cleaned it up and went on with our morning. 

A little later when Alison was working out one of the lights in the gym stopped working. She told me about that when I was heading to workout. Before working out I decided to replace the light. I pulled the light down and water came out. Tex was vindicated, but we had a leak. I tried to see what was causing the leak, but since the water only came out of the light fixture in the ceiling and did not appear to be actively leaking I had no idea what could be causing it. 

Alison and I both started calling plumbers. It took a few calls before we found one that could come right away. The plumber arrived and cut a couple of exploratory holes in the ceiling. He couldn't see a leak. He then came upstairs and inspected the kitchen sink. It also didn't appear to be causing the issue. Next he began inspecting the dishwasher. He pulled off the front plate and it was wet. It turned out the pump in our dishwasher broke and the dishwasher overflowed. The water damaged the laminate under the dishwasher and seeped down into the basement. 

At that point the plumbers work was done. He put us in touch with a disaster cleanup company that could come the same day. They arrived and pulled out the dishwasher for us. We decided it was not worth trying to fix - we have never liked the dishwasher much anyway. The disaster cleanup folks assessed the water damage. All things considered it could have been much worse. The water didn't spread too much and the damage to the laminate only impacted a few boards. They decided we could dry everything in place. They placed fans and dehumidifiers in the basement and in our kitchen. This was so loud. They removed our dishwasher. We could not have a new dishwasher installed until the floor was dried and the damaged laminate was repaired. We would also be limited to using the right side of our sink, since the dishwasher connects to the drain on the left side. 

While this felt overwhelming in the moment, we also had reasons for gratitude. We were able to catch the leak relatively quickly and get professionals in to help fix the problem before it spread or became worse. We have money saved to for home issues like this so we don't have to worry about how we will pay for the repairs. All things considered this could have been much worse.

That night we needed to get out of the house. We looked at dishwashers online and had a fairly good idea of what we wanted, but we decided to stop by Lowes and look at a few models. It was good we did because it turns out Bosch is not making many dishwashers due to the pandemic. If we ordered a Bosch there could potential be multiple delivery delays. Instead the sales person at Lowes helped us find a Kitchen-aid dishwasher that we loved. The only problem was this Lowes location only had a spec model. While it was discounted Alison didn't love the idea of having to transport it ourselves. Plus the sales guy didn't know if it was already sold. He promised to call us the next day. 

We made one more stop on our way home. We bought some paper utensils - plates, cups and bowls to cut down on the number of dishes we would have to hand wash each day. 

The fans and dehumidifiers made for a long night. I slept okay, but every time Alison woke up in the night she could hear the fans and it reminded her of the whole stressful situation. Tex and CC also hated the loud noise. Both animals slept on our bed and were as close to us as they could possibly be. 

The next day our Lowe's salesmen told us the spec model wasn't available, but he had some other options for us that were 10 days out. We didn't love that response. (He would call back Thursday and tell us the spec model was actually available, but  by then we would have already bought our new dishwasher). Alison looked online and found that the Salt Lake City Lowe's had the exact model we loved in stock and could deliver it the next day. We ordered it on the spot. The disaster cleanup guys came back to see how everything was drying out. The kitchen was in good shape and they removed the fan and humidifiers. This was a big boost to our quality of life. The basement needed a little bit more so they left the fans down there for one more day. 

Alison and I settled into a routine. We would wash our dishes as they became dirty. It was a huge pain, but we were making it work. When something like this happens I am grateful we are both working from home. It gave us much more flexibility to deal with the issues. Alison and I did a great job tag teaming throughout this process. If someone showed up the one of us was in a meeting the other person would take care of it. Working as a team we were both able to balance work responsibilities and taking care of our home. 

We were initially planning to have the disaster repair company complete the repair work. Then we ran into a potential issue. We had 3 extra pieces of laminate, which was exactly how many we would need to fix the damage. The issue was that this left no room for error. In order for their contractor to repair the damage they would need us to find more flooring. The problem with obtaining more flooring was that our specific laminate was discontinued. We talked to our brother-in-law Dan to get his opinion on what we should do. He is a general contractor. He was able to come by and look at the damage. He thought he could fix the flooring with the pieces we had. He also reached out to his flooring people and they were able to find a small amount of our flooring. We bought a box just to be safe. 

We knew if we were going to have a contractor repair the kitchen floor and drywall in our basement we would prefer to have Dan do it. Kristin has school every other Saturday right now. Dan told us if we could watch his kids he could work on our house on Saturday. We were elated. Having our house put back together on Saturday was our best case scenario. 

Dan brought the girls over in the morning and jumped right into the repairs. While he worked we entertained the girls. They got to come grocery shopping with us. We figured this would be a good test of whether or not we could cut it as parents. It went swimmingly. The girls were great at the store and we got everything we needed. While we were at the store we bought Skylee some Valentine's candy she could give to her Valentine - her little sister. It was so cute to watch her pick out a special treat. 

Holly loves cats and is on the lookout for CC. CC doesn't love Holly back. Holly found CC under the bed and would lay down and stare at her and say "kitty"

Tex wanted to figure out what Holly was looking at.

When CC did come out Holly would follow her around the house. 

Back at home we got the kids fed and heated up some chili for ourselves and Dan. Then we watched the Black Cauldron with the kids. We made some popcorn and we snuggled up while we watched the movie. Alison was not a fan, but Skylee enjoyed it. Holly was mostly indifferent. She downed maybe ten bottles of water during the movie and halfway through decided to wander around the room. When we were done with that movie Alison and Skylee decided to watch Wreck-it-Ralph Breaks the internet. 

Skylee and Alison playing Disney Heads Up

Watching The Black Cauldron

Dan worked into the evening to finish up the repairs and get our dishwasher installed. Kristin came over after class. We got some Indian food to share for dinner and played games, talked, and helped Dan with the dishwasher install. I say help loosely as Dan did basically all of the work. At the end of the night our house was put back together and we had a functioning dishwasher. We are so grateful for Dan and his willingness to share his skills with us. This week was fairly stressful and it would have been immensely more difficult to put our house back together without him. 

We felt much better after Dan finished. We had a dishwasher and our house was beginning to have a semblance of normalcy. We did need to paint the ceiling in the gym where the drywall had been repaired. Since we were painting we decided to spend the scope of the project. We spent most of the next day touching up the paint on our baseboards and walls throughout the entire house. It was a huge project, but we were thrilled with the results. We finally completed a backlog of house projects that have been on our list for a while now. While we weren't happy with the failure of the dishwasher and all the problems that came with it we are happy about our new dishwasher and the maintenance/repairs we took care of around our house. It took exactly one week, but our house is put back together. It feels so good.