Real Ray Wednesday on Tuesday

Good evening lovelies!

Well... this week I have learned way more than I have ever needed to know about sump pumps, carpet, carpet pads, water damage, sump pump floats, water pumps, shop vacs, rug doctors...

Let me just start by saying that Scott and I are so VERY blessed to of had his brother in town this week!  His brother came over last night while I was in class, to see our new house!  Well as Scott was showing him the basement he made a HUGE discovery.  Our sump pump was apparently not pumping water out because it was now in puddles all over the carpet in the basement.  The water was about an inch and 1/2 deep in the bathroom and storage room.

**Praise the Lord we did not have many belongings down there... just odds and ins that we have not put away.... but precious belongings at that... books with our notes in the margins... yearbooks from growing up... but no damage to those things!

We hardly visit our basement except for the occasional hunt for a specific game or movie... so the Lord was with us for sure yesterday.

Well here is the story... Scott messed around with the pump to see what was wrong and he noticed a fuse was blown... so after a trip down the street to Home Depot (by far my favorite store to have close by) he was able to get the fuse replaced and the pump started to work!! A huge sigh of relieve fell over the T's family!  We spent the rest of the night using the good ol' Rug Doctor to suck up all the water we could possibly get and as quickly as possible.  We slept very well last night after such an exhausting evening.

We both knew we would need to tend to this issue all day yesterday and made arrangements with our employers to have the day off... good thing.  We woke up at 6am in order to get the trash set out in time to be picked up... Scott decided to check on the mayhem of the previous evening, to find that the pump had failed during the night and our basement was back to being full of water... another inch to inch and 1/2 deep.

Good news is... the sump pump was fixed this morning! yay! We were trying so hard to get the water out before the repair guy came and as we were sucking water up, the same amount was coming out.  Once that pump started working... it was a good day!  We spent the rest of the day rug doctoring the heck out of that place!

However... after another trip to Home Depot... we find out that our carpet pad is absolutely destroyed... and our carpet might not be salvageable either.  While this is unfortunate... we have some exciting decisions to make! What do we do with the flooring?  We are considering staining the concrete in the basement and keeping that as the flooring rather than putting carpet back down.  Another thought is to put ceramic tile down... the concrete would be easier and cheaper.  Also... I have been doing some great research, thanks to my buddies at Google, about concrete floors and they are really neat!  They have some awesome ideas for them!

All in all... not the best couple of days... we will be ripping up carpet all day tomorrow most likely... we'll see.  We were told that mold can start to grow in a mater of 3 days! So we have to act pretty fast!

I just keep thinking... 'When would we have noticed this if Scott's brother hadn't come over to see the house?' YIKES! Scary thought!  The Lord was totally looking out for us!

Anything new and exciting with you all this week?