Basement Boo-boo/Re-do
A few weeks ago, I took the familiar route to my basement work area to begin an evening of DecaTech client work. Halfway across the basement floor, my foot went squish in a puddle of water. My first thought was that Tobey (who is currently potty training) had a little accident earlier that evening. Unfortunately, I realized that it was quite a bit more water than that and that it spread all around the furnace area. A quick peek inside confirmed my fears - the sewer had backed up, and it was all over the place.
I stayed home with Tobey the next morning to wait for a Roto-Rooter guy “snake” the main line and clear up the blockage. It took over an hour, but he was able to clear up the problem. That night Carrie replaced my towels with fans and used her Kirby to try and clean up some of the mess. The next day she arranged to have some carpet specialists come out and assess and clean up the remainder. This is when the real bad news hit - the specialists said that is was a level 3 hazard (as bad as it gets) and the entire basement carpet would need to be removed immediately and the entire house sanitized. Argh! Luckily, our insurance has covered most of the damages, minus our deductible.
So the next few days were spent moving our entire basement - which includes DecaTech corporate headquarters, and lots of computers and networking equipment - into our garage and other places thru-out the house. We focused on the fact that we had planned to redo our basement in a few years, and we now got a chance to do it earlier. We decided on a nice laminate flooring that was similar to the Pergo we have in our kitchen and hallways upstairs. Eventually, we hope to convert an area into a home theatre setup. So, all’s well that end’s well. 
Below are some pictures from right after the clean-up. In the first photo, in case you haven’t been in our basement before, the area to the left (which is the center of the room) is where the sewer/culprit lives.
Ah, progress - the new flooring goes in!
More pictures coming soon!
July 13th, 2005 at 10:47 am
Wow, that was the worst sewer “potty” accident I ever heard of! Will you ever go barefoot into the basement again? I am glad that your computers were elevated and not sitting on the floor. I am also glad that you had homeowner’s insurance to help out after you had to pay a deductible, I am sure. Good luck and I hope it smells good down there again!
July 13th, 2005 at 12:51 pm
The new floor looks great! Can’t wait to see it in person in August!
July 13th, 2005 at 3:54 pm
When you find lemons make lemonade! You took a sad happening and made it better. Looks very nice!!!