High Tide

It has been said by many that our current house is a little larger than our current needs. Therefore, we don't tend to venture into the basement that much. The other day, I went down into the storage room to grab something and thought that the carpet was colder than usual. I happened to not have any socks on, and as I ventured further and further into the guest room, I discovered that the carpet wasn't just cold, it was wet. I immediately thought that Raven had somehow gotten downstairs and decided to mark the carpet. I couldn't understand when or why that would have happened, but it seemed like the most likely explanation. When I told Kevin, he came down with carpet cleaner and started to spray it and rub it in. Then, I backed up into the closet area and discovered it was wet too. We started thinking that there was no way she could have marked the entire carpet. Then Kevin looked at the wall and saw a small bulge in the wall about halfway down. He leaned into the wall and it immediately buckled. Oh boy! Now we knew we were dealing with water damage. We had a plumber and disaster clean up folks come by and they discovered that our outside water spigot had frozen over the winter and when we turned it on, (to fill up our 80 gallon water tank inside our camping trailer) the joint halfway down the wall inside sprung a leak. They removed about half the wall of sheet rock, part of the ceiling and the carpet and pad. I did find it interesting that the window well, which would be where everyone would first look for a leak was the driest area in the whole room! We were happy to find out that our homeowner's insurance would cover the damage except for our deductible and eventually it all got fixed, but definitely something we'd not like to repeat.