Time Flies

Sorry for the delay in updating. It's hard to believe we have already been in our house for 3.5 months! So many disasters in such a short amount of time. But that's for another day.

As far as the flood goes: Not surprisingly, the plumber determined that the sellers had neglected to install a small but very necessary fitting, which is what caused the pipe to burst. After frantically moving everything out of the room, we rolled up the carpet and moved it outside while we borrowed a wet-vac and tried to suck up as much water as we could from the carpet pad. But it was a poorly-made composite pad and was too far gone to fix, so we ripped it all out (that stuff is really heavy when wet!). We rolled the carpet back out and rented a very large blower from the home center to dry it out. That took a couple of days but it did a really good job, and for only $20.00 it was totally worth it. We were able to save the carpet.

We went and bought new padding and arranged for an installer to come put it down. We could have done this ourselves, but the actual carpet had never been stretched and tacked down, so we figured we would get the installer and kill two birds with one stone. Unfortunately when he arrived he told us what we had been suspecting all along, that the carpet was cut too small and could not be stretched enough to fill the gaps between carpet and wall. So if you look close, you can see cement and unused tack strips around the perimeter of the room. Eventually we'll get some new carpet, but it's not really a priority right now.