1. Have your husband wake you up at 1:30 in the morning because there is water all over the floor in the kitchen.2. Take every towel in the house and try to sop up the water. Realize that more water is coming in from under the wall. Move all the furniture off of the tile.
3. Call the emergency maintenance pager for your landlord. Wait for them to call back. Wait. Wait. Call again. Wait some more. Have your husband call about twenty times over the next hour while you desperately look for more towels.
4. Find a bucket and start sweeping water into a dustpan and then emptying it into the bucket. This works but is very slow. More water is coming in.
5. Husband will call landlord and leave desperate and pissed message on their machine. Notice that water is now coming up from under the carpet in husband's closet of books and movies and records. Continue sopping up water as husband moves said media into the middle of the floor.
6. Now water is starting to come up in your bedroom closet and up underneath your bookshelves in the bedroom. Move all clothes off the affected side of the closet. Start moving books too.
7. Continue the sop and sweep method of water control. Continue to not hear from landlord. Husband tries knocking on the door of the apartment behind you and no one answers. There is also water running from under the door and out into the hallway.
8. In total desperation, have husband call 911 after trying the non-emergency number and being put on hold for fifteen minutes. Firemen will come.
9. The nice firemen will break into the apartment behind you, which is apparently empty. They stop the water (hose under sink got loose and sprayed everything) and even shop vac up a bunch of it in the empty apartment (firemen are prepared for everything). Now that new water isn't coming in, the sop and sweep method eventually clears the tile of water.
10. Go to bed around five, but don't fall asleep until six. Wake up at seven when the maintenance guy calls (his pager had fallen under the desk in his bedroom and he couldn't hear it). Tell guy the story, and tell him you will call him back after you get some more sleep.
11. Sleep for another hour, then wake up with the anxious jitters. Drink coffee, type listy blog entry and wait for hubby to get up so the maintenance guys can get in here and do their thing.
12. Waste a whole day of vacation moving your furniture around, washing towels, and trying to nap.
But the tile is super clean in our kitchen, if you can call something clean that has been submerged in gross brownish water that came through the wall. Also, my feet and legs won't stop tingling from three hours of squatting and wiping up water, and my hands feel all gross from three hours of being wet and wringing out towels.
4 comments:
Yea! for firemen to the rescue. But couldn't they have used the vac in your place too? Just seems like the neighborly thing to do.
An excellent idea -- and they probably would have if we had asked them, but I didn't want to take up too much of their time in case there was a fire or some kind of life-threatening emergency. The firehouse is just a few blocks away, and our maintenance guy said he was going to walk over some donuts and a big thank you for their help.
you should have used a sick day, kks. SICK DAY. never use vacation for a day in which you are not actually vacationing or at least doing something you want to do. talk to ralph. see if you can change it.
that sucks! you guys were smart to call 911 to get that door opened up. good thing your husband is unemployed so that he was awake at 1:30am to notice the water. imagine if you just would have woken up and stepped into wet, squishy carpet. ick.
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