We have lived in our home for 10 years. Our home has withstood 5 outrageously messy children, 1 big hairy stinky dog, 1 cat, numerous wild mice, numerous friends of the outrageously messy children....
The carpet throughout our house has been punished and thrashed severely. It shows wear, tear and disgust. And as you know, dirty stained carpet NEVER, I repeat, NEVER looks good in this state. On the other hand, we can sneak by with our stripped, scratched and faded wood floors by calling it, "distressed, antiqued, or having character."
We have not had the money to replace any of the carpet in our home. I try to "spot" clean it when I can but because of its sad state, it really has no hope...until two weeks ago (remember this post...when I was bending...ever so close to snapping?!) when our water heater took a turn for the worse.
After trying to assess its health and wishful thinking that it was only "sick", it couldn't take the punishment of 7 people showering, bathing and washing clothes and dishes so often and gave up...died right there in our basement.
It began to "bleed" water onto the unfinished portion of the room where it was housed. Water attempted to drain down the grate that had been designed to aid in such a disaster...but it couldn't keep up. The water began to make its way through the wall, to the finished portion of our basement, seeping into the carpet and padding.
It was that lovely moldy scent, quickly permeating our basement that really had me "bending wickedly close" to my snapping point. I started to envision mold creeping up our walls, making us all sick. The carpet was absolutely the least of my worries...I mean it was already disgusting. Spotted with years of disobedient children's spilt drinks, toppled over food items and dirty shoes tracking in ghastly amounts of dirt and grime. You see, we had a rule...no eating in the basement. Every few months I would make my way into the dark abyss of our lower level (I make a point never to go down there) and find between couch cushions, under pillows, inside drawers, under cabinets items that could feed a third world country. Along side these items were utensils, plates, wrappers, broken toys, chewed gum, empty bottles...SERIOUSLY! Ironically, not one of my children have ever admitted they have eaten down there...
I truly didn't care about the ruined carpet at this point. I had already accepted that it would remain in this state until our last child left our home (and the cat and dog left too).
After hearing our unfortunate news, a few of my friends made mention that we should be sure to file a claim with our home insurance company. I was told that more than likely they would replace the entire basement with new carpet.
We called and an adjuster came to our home.
A day later, we were sent a letter stating we would receive a large amount of money to cover the carpet for the entire basement but drywall and baseboards too!
If only you could see the sad state of our basement. Dreams of freshly painted walls (Garth made the boys Spackle the hundreds of holes made from wild boy play, a few years ago...yep...the white spackle is still spotting the walls) and cushy new carpet have been only that...a dream...until we lost our water heater.
Now we finally can make plans for our sickly basement. Walls can be sanded and painted, carpet or laminate will be placed down and kids can go up for sale (so it will stay nice and clean).
What seemed like a complete misfortune and injustice, turned into a complete miracle.
1 comment:
Good things come to those who wait!
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