Home Owner Drama

One Sunday Morning we woke up to this…

Soaking wet carpet in our basement!  The carpet was wet at the bottom of the stairs, in our storage room, in Austin’s room and in our guest bedroom.  We were panicked!  We called Vance’s dad over and he and Vance found the problem.

The culprit was this…

The sump pump was not working.  (Vance and I had no idea what a sump pump was prior to this). Every time we flushed the toilet or ran any water in the basement…it seeped into the carpet. Once we knew what the problem was we were much more at ease.  Since it was Sunday, we decided to wait to have a plumber come and fix it.  We dried out the carpet and didn’t use any water downstairs.  We thought we were good. 

Well, we woke up a few mornings later and it was flooded again.  We couldn’t figure out what could have happened.  Then we realized that our water softened had done it cleansing process in the middle of the night.  Woops!.  Now it was flooded again, but worse.

We were so worried about how we were going to pay to have the carpet replaced.  We checked our Home Owners Insurance manual and it said they do not cover any damage caused by sump pump failure.  BUMMER!!! I was talking to my dad one day on the phone and told him that the insurance wasn’t going to cover it.  He asked if we had talked to an agent.  I told him what it said in the manual and he said to check with an actual agent because sometimes the manuals aren’t very accurate.  I am so grateful for his advice.  I called the agent and he said it is covered.  We took a few pictures, got an estimate on what it would cost to replace the carpet, and the insurance sent us a check for $5,000. 

So now our basement looks like this…

The insurance money was enough to replace the carpet in the entire basement, not just the rooms that got wet.  Plus we had a little extra.  So what did we do with the extra?  We painted…well, I painted and Vance helped.  We also had a little extra to complete a few “pet” projects, like painting our bookshelves. Oh yeah, most of our extra cash from the insurance went towards some doctor bills.

So what started out to be a disaster for us new little home owners, turned out to be a huge blessing.  We love our new basement with the new soft carpet and the freshly painted walls.  Here’s to good insurance!