when it rains......

... it definitely pours!

we've been having trouble with a clog in our plumbing. when we turn on the upstairs garbage disposal or run a load of laundry, the gross stuff comes up thru the downstairs shower drain. usually gary would clean it up, we'd say we should call roto-rooter, and then we'd forget about it. well, a couple of weeks ago, i ran a load of laundry, went upstairs and then forgot about it until later. i came downstairs and found that the bathroom and about 2 feet of carpet surrounding the bathroom was totally flooded - with all that gross junk from the pipes! the water from the bathroom was cleaned up, and gary rented a rug doctor to suck the extra water from the carpet. roto-rooter came out the next day, said it was a bad clog, and things have been running fine since then.

last week, we started noticing a strong musty smell in the downstairs. we'd been talking about renting the rug doctor again and giving it a really good cleaning since it was dirty anyway from us walking on it and bingham's random pee spots. last saturday, gary cleaned the rug, and by sunday afternoon we noticed a really gross rotten food smell. it wasn't until then that we realized that there's prolly gross gunk and mold under the carpets, and probably in the walls surrounding the bathroom b/c of the flood. ugh!

so, we're meeting with the insurance guy today to determine if there's mold in the walls. if so, we'll prolly file a claim and have them pay for the wall repairs and carpet replacement. well, we've decided to put wood or laminant floors down instead of carpet (easier to replace a few boards instead of the entire carpet if it happens again). if it's determined that the walls are ok, we'll just eat the cost and replace the carpets ourselves. it wouldn't be worth making the claim for a few extra hundred bucks since we'd then be "on probation" for 3 years.