Don't Go To Bed With Your Dishwasher Running!

Here's what's been going on at our house!...

Last month we had somewhat of a home disaster. It was a Saturday night. My youngest son and I were the only ones at home -- my older kids were spending the night with friends and my husband was at what was supposed to be an overnight trip to a high school reunion.

Around 11:30, I made the rounds around the house, turning off lights, locking doors, etc. Then I turned on my dishwasher and told my son goodnight and we both went to bed.

I'm an extremely sound sleeper - fall asleep as soon as my head hits the pillow and stay asleep until I hear the alarm clock. I also sleep with two fans going in my room so I don't always hear something that may be going on elsewhere in the house. For some reason I woke up and looked at the clock and it was 3:30 a.m. I could see that the kitchen light was on and hear someone walking around.

I got out of bed to investigate and ran into my husband in the living room. He had decided to come home instead of spending the night at his reunion. He quickly said to me, "we have a major catastrophe!" Well, as you can imagine that scared the you-know-what out of me. I thought he meant something bad happened at his reunion. 

But, no. He meant something bad happened in our house!

A flood!

The water line that runs to the dishwasher had busted and water was spewing heavily and loudly. He said it sounded like a train when he opened the door to come in the house. We don't really know how long it had been going but there was a four hour window between when I started the dishwasher and went to bed until my husband came home. It could've been flooding for hours!

He immediately shut off the water and we moved our BRAND NEW DINING ROOM FURNITURE that was partially sitting in water. Then, we just stared at the mess. Parts of our kitchen, dining room, living room, foyer, master bedroom and basement were affected. Honestly, it was almost 4 a.m. and we were so overwhelmed that we just went to bed and decided to tackle the mess in the morning. 

These pictures don't really do justice to show how much of a mess it was but you can see that we had to rip out carpet and baseboards. The living room had carpet but the other affected rooms had hardwood floors. That all has to be replaced. A couple pieces of furniture were damaged (my new dining room furniture was ok!). We are just thankful that our home owner's insurance is covering everything (but now I'm afraid our insurance rates are going to go sky-high after such an expensive claim).

There's our dog, Piper. She proved to be a useless guard dog, never once waking me up to alert me to the loud flood that was in progress in the house. HA! She probably saw what was going on and ran to hide.

After contacting our insurance company, they sent a restoration service to our house. They set up fans and dehumidifiers all over the house that ended up having to run for over 3 days. All that equipment was so loud - it felt like you were in an airplane hangar! You literally could hardly hear each other speak if you were in these rooms. 

Since we are going to have all this work going on, we have decided to also do some kitchen renovations at the same time. We'll be painting our kitchen cabinets and replacing our Formica counter with granite. My husband is a builder/contractor so he will be doing most of the work himself. It's great that he can do it but he is so busy with his jobs that he just won't have alot of free time so it will probably take awhile. We were supposed to host a Thanksgiving dinner but had to cancel that. I'm just keeping fingers crossed that it will all be done before Christmas.  It will definitely give me a very late start on any holiday decorating.

This happened in early October. Between the restoration service and the insurance claim process, we haven't even begun any work. Hopefully this weekend we will be ordering the hardwood floor. I'm so ready to start seeing some progress. 

So, the moral to this long story is...don't go to bed with your dishwasher running!

My dad used to always tell me that. From the time that I had my own home, he would always say, "never go to bed or leave the house with any appliances running." I cannot even tell you how many times he used to say that!

Man, I should've listened to my Dad!