I walked into my laundry room and started to rummage through the pile of 'to be washed' clothes strewn all over the floor. The blouse I needed wasn't there, so I moved on to the smaller pile of damp ('to be dried') clothes. As I bent over to get the blouse, I tried not to look at the greenish black stain on the peeling wall right underneath the utility sink. Instead, I threw the blouse into the dryer, cracked open the window to let out the steam (and the musty odor) that I knew would soon fill the room. The constant sound of water dripping into the washer was annoying, so I decided to turn it on (I had loaded it the night before). As I hurried out of the room, I almost slipped - again - in the small puddle of water that had formed under the sink overnight.



Waiting for my blouse to dry, I picked up the latest issue of my favorite home decoration magazine. In a few minutes, I would be buying all the lovely things I needed to re-decorate our basement / living / office space. I was excited. I remember that there was an article in the magazine on 'water damage restoration'. Boring, didn't read it. Another article was on laundry room decorating, and it had a lot about water damage restoration too. I didn't read that one either, though I did stare wistfully at the pictures of the shiny new laundry room.

Three or five hours later, I pulled up in front of my home, my car loaded with new decorating items and equipment I had been waiting for months to purchase. I took an armload of stuff out, walked to the front door, turned the key - and stepped into a wet living room. I remember wading to the dining room table to put down my purchases on a dry surface. In the back of my mind, I already knew I would be returning them to the store. I knew I'd be spending the money on water damage restoration.

I called my husband who told me to turn off the main water supply and get out of the house. He was going to call a water damage restoration professional. I knew he was angry. He'd spent hours the evening before attempting to convince me that we needed a new washer and an exhaust fan more than we needed a re-decorated basement. He'd said I could re-decorate the laundry room if I wanted to, that we would end up spending much more on water damage restoration when that washer hose finally bursts. Trying to console myself, I thought, "at least we won't have to spend money on water damage restoration of a newly decorated basement."

The men arrived, turned off the electricity supply to the house, and walked in. The man from the water damage restoration place wasn't at all surprised by the extent of the damage. He said that burst washing machine hoses could deliver hundreds of gallons of water an hour. He looked at me and said, "and you left the machine running while you were out." I wished he hadn't said that right in front of my husband, who had warned me about six million times that this habit of mine would cost him thousands of dollars worth of water damage restoration work one of these days.

As the man from water damage restoration company and my husband talked and shook their heads, I was discreetly trying to locate my decorating magazine. I needed that article about laundry room re-decorating! I'd seen some lovely cabinets this morning at the store.