“Flooded Basement” by Perfect Homes is licensed under CC BY 2.0 
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Specifically, our sump pump gave up the ghost overnight on Sunday and I didn’t discover this until I walked down the basement stairs on Monday morning and stepped into about a foot of cold water on the basement floor. Our basement is on a few different levels, so the foot or so I stepped into implied there were at least two feet of water in some other areas of the basement. We called the plumber and our insurance agent as soon as I was able to shut off the water main to the house and get back upstairs.
Once the plumbers were able to get the sump pump back online temporarily, the water level in the basement began to drop, just as the clean-up crew were arriving by way of the insurance agent. Things have been hectic around here since then, but especially once the insurance company notified us that our first claim in nearly 40 years was declined, and we had to scramble to find ways to scrape up money to pay for the plumber and the clean-up crew’s efforts. (Unlike normal people, we don’t have a ready reserve of several thousand dollars just sitting there waiting for a random emergency to pop up.)
I don’t know how long it will take to get back to normal, so if you see just the QotD and 2am video posts for a while, you can safely assume I’m still busy with domestic issues.
Fortunately, when Victor moved out, he took most of his valued possessions with him … although he’s bound to discover things he left behind that he now wishes he’d taken with him. I know I’ve lost a small bookcase full of wine books, as they were in the small room we’ve been using as a wine cellar and that’s at the lowest point in the basement. The top shelf might have been above the high-water line, but I haven’t been able to check yet. The wines themselves will be fine, although the labels may be a bit loose.
My moribund model train collection will be thinned out, as a lot of the books, magazines, plans, and other perishable items were also down close to floor level. Everything was neatly boxed up, but those boxes will have deformed or disintegrated in the water, so sorting through everything is going to be a huge pain in the ass.
