We had a wet (basement) Christmas

I was thinking Christmas this year would be fairly quiet without too many stories to share. Pretty naive of me, eh?

We had planned for a quiet morning at our house, the rest of the day at my parents' place with the family all coming over for Christmas dinner. Finally, we would come home and pass out from all the delicious food mum and everyone prepared and tired after a full day.

Unfortunately the homeownership gods decided to play pranks on us. We got home, stuffed and tired, and very much looking forward to bed. Knowing we were heading out tomorrow morning to see Dave's family we started to clean up the house and I was cleaning the litterbox upstairs, but it needed more litter so I went down to the basement to get some.

Our basement is unfinished, and full of boxes so I couldn't see that well and went to turn on another light when I noticed a distinct squishing sound under my foot. The squishing sound was complemented by a cold, wet feeling on that foot. I foolishly took another step, and lo and behold my other foot was wet now too.

At this point I didn't know what it was. I kinda swore and thought "not pee again!" but then realized that the area that was wet was bigger than all our animals' bladders combined. The water was up and over top of my toes.

After some humming, hawing, and swearing we decided the carpet and underpad (you know, the one I spent $30 cleaning not a few weeks ago) wasn't salvageable so we started tearing it up with an exacto knife and putting it in big garbage bags. In the process we uncovered the source of the leak; a crude patch applied by a previous owner. When you stepped on this patch it squeezed up a bit of water. I feel like calling up the guy and thanking him for the Christmas present but Dave said I'm not allowed.

Dave sopped up water with the mop while I ran around to the neighbours hoping one of them would have a ShopVac we could borrow. Sadly no one was home save the creepy drunk weirdos 2 doors down. (the good news is that their place looked empty so maybe we're getting a new year's present- new tenants there)

We continued with the mopping and cutting of carpet and underpad. We've left the patch on for now but will take it off when we get back from visiting Dave's family on the 28th. I'm just glad to have had the chance to scrub my feet clean of the basement water cocktail.

Hopefully the fans we have going and dehumidifier down there will get it drier. Ah the joys of homeownership. We're really lucky to have a house of our own, I just wish it didn't come with a leaky basement. On the plus side Dave says "Yay we have our own swimming pool!" Just not the one we had in mind.