WHEN IT SNOWS IT POURS

Ok, I know you're probably thinking I got that wrong, it's supposed to be "when it RAINS it pours, but, not so this week for us. Tuesday, the 17th, was a bitterly cold Montana day. Not surprising this time of year. I got up in the morning, took a shower on the other side of the house, got dressed and went to a Dr. appt I had. After the appointment, I went to Jake and Heather's for awhile to see them and Ben. While I was there, Myrna called me in tears. It was also the anniversary of Austin's death, so I jumped in my car and headed to her house. On the way, I called the Elders and asked them to stop at the house and put the dogs outside. (I had left them in that morning because it was so crazy cold). They gladly did that, and when they did, I got a call telling me that there was water pouring into the basement and it was flooded.

We had a frozen and broken pipe. I hurried home from Myrna's (I had only been there for a few minutes) and as I opened the garage door, I could hear the sound of rushing water even before I opened the door of my car. Water was gushing from behind Dan's big toolbox in his workshop, although at the time, I wasn't sure where it was coming from.

The first thing we had to do was turn the water off. Elder Goodwin and I climbed down into the crawlspace and looked for the shutoff valve. After much crawling in a lot of dirt and through way too many spider webs, we finally found it RIGHT NEXT to the door of the crawl space! And to think Elder Goodwin had gone all over down there!!

Next thing was to get the shop vac down there and start cleaning up the water. I borrowed one from the Larsen's too, ours is pretty little, and they have a HUGE one, so the Elders and Jared Hammer all worked away sucking up the water.

I had called Dan, (by the way, did I mention Dan was out of town and driving home from Helena when all this happened?) and stressed him out (not my smartest move).

I called our insurance agent and he gave me the name of some restoration and disaster clean up companies. I ended up hiring "Faithful Restoration". I liked that they are a Christian based company and I liked the attitude of the owner when he said that he would take care of everything for us.

He came over, and got a plumber for us, who didn't come until almost 9 pm. (so we had been out of water from about 1pm until 9pm) he found the burst pipe and fixed it.

Now we have a bunch of dehumidifiers and fans going all over the basement, in the laundry room and in the shop. Because we had no carpet downstairs, there was nothing but the walls to soak up the water, so the walls are wet about 2 feet or so up them. We don't know if they will be able to dry the walls or if they are going to have to cut parts of the walls out and replace them. The "drywall" is now "wetwall"!!

I am grateful that we were able to get the water back on so fast though, and get the restoration team on the job so fast. I'm also grateful that Farm Bureau has (so far) been SO easy to work with....the complete opposite of what Farmer's was after the hail storm 1 1/2 years ago. They were HORRIBLE to work with and as soon as we got everything fixed (which took FOUR months) we changed to Farm Bureau, who was who every contractor said was the best to work with.

Anyway, the fixing process goes on, and we listen to the hum of all the blowers and dehumidifiers as they do their job and we hope the damage is minimal....We have about a half a foot of snow, and the temperatures are bitter outside, so it's nice to be able to just snuggle up here at home, a home WITH water!!!