Series of Unfortunate Events

It was a Sunday afternoon in early December when I was coming home from a listing appointment, sitting in front of the house in my car having a phone conversation with my Principal Broker aka boss-supervisor-manager. About fifteen minutes prior my husband had called me asking me to leave the car in the driveway so he could wash it, and when he ran outside frantically waving at me, I mistook this as him being impatient and just waved him to go away. How wrong was I… These few minutes started a series of events that we are still dealing with today, at the very end of February.

It all started with the bears. It was always the same bears, a mama and her two cubs. We had had a lot of bear activity in our neighborhood and honestly, I’m convinced that these guys know when its Sunday night as trash gets picked up on Monday morning. The bears had climbed over the fence, broken into our trash cans – no, bungee cords no longer work – and had started feasting on their treats. My husband opened the kitchen window to yell at them, but these guys were not budging. Someone else might have closed the window and let them continue with their feast, and this is where it becomes my fault as I’m the one that keeps telling my family that we cannot allow them to feed and that the only right thing is to scare them away. So, my brave husband opens the garage door grabbing the bear spray and sprays the bears just as I have taught him to do. The bears run through the fence, across the street but a small gust takes the spray into my husband’s eyes and suddenly he is blinded. On the way back inside, he hits himself on the truck mirror, trips on something in the garage and finally finds his way to the kitchen sink to start rinsing his eyes. The kitchen window is still open, and he gets another dose of bear spray through the open window… Owie, double whammy. As he still cannot see anything, he moves to the powder room sink to rinse and hears me pulling in front.

By this point we have our garbage, the neighbor’s garbage, our yard waste and the neighbors yard waste spread around, and a broken fence that I mentioned above. My dear husband is trying to get me to end the phone call while I keep ignoring him, and as he was knocking on the car window there may have been some hand gestures on my side too. I end my call, open the window and I would like to say that I asked kindly but have a feeling I may have been a tad irritated, what was going on; “Bears, garbage and bear spray…” I sigh and drive to the back parking the car and jump out. Remember, I’m coming out of a listing appointment, so I am wearing a black suit and fancy shoes as I grab a trash bag and intend to start cleaning up. However, I cannot open the gate as the fallen garbage cans are blocking the gate from opening. I end up running around the house in the rain. I see the broken fence on the street side, I go through the gate and quickly realize that one trash bag won’t do much. I need a shovel and maybe a dozen yard waste bags. My husband joins me in between the homes and in my fancy outfit I shovel trash into the bags he holds open and after a while everything is cleaned up. I leave him outside to wash the empty bins and go inside to get changed.

What greets me inside as I enter through the door is about an inch of water on the floor. In the midst of the chaos he had accidentally left the powder room faucet running. It shouldn’t have flooded, but as it happens the popup drain stopper had been broken and instead of draining the sink filled up and flooded. It flooded the bathroom. It flooded the entryway. It flooded the living room and the closet under the stairs. Maybe fifteen minutes in time and so much damage. The good in the story is that we were at home and that the water was clean instead of being sewage.

This time barefoot, but still in my black suit I grab every towel I can find in the house and start working on drying all the wet surfaces. I drench a towel and throw it on the porch grabbing the next one. One towel after the other.

Call the insurance. Call the water mitigation pros. File a claim. Start drying. Estimate the damage.

I’ll have to say that Pure Dry did a phenomenal job and even if the next five days were like living inside an airplane with tropical temperatures, I have nothing but good to say about these guys. They were on time, they were polite they were helpful. They even called a plumber for me and the plumber they chose was just as great as they were and even gave us a discount. Next time I need a plumber I will for sure call Day and Night Plumbing again.

We had to replace flooring in the bathroom, entryway, under the stairs closet and our living room. We chose to add our kitchen and dining area to the project as well. We also had to replace insulation, baseboards and door frames, as well as the bathroom vanity. The fence I was able to repair myself. December, I spent negotiating with contractors and vendors. My husband took care of negotiating with our insurance company. In January we had chosen what we wanted, and whom to work with and started ordering materials. Then came the snow, the snow that halted everything for another two weeks.

Finally, last week we got our new flooring and our new vanity arrived. Today the under stairs closet carpet was replaced and hopefully sometime in the near future we’ll have the door frames, insulation and plumbing completed as well. To me it feels like we are almost done as the flooring was by far the biggest part of the project and even if I don’t have insulation under my house or a working sink, the house looks like a home again.

There is a silver lining to everything. I like my new floors way better than the old ones, they make our downstairs look bigger and lighter.