Dirty exposed bedroom floor

We’ve been sleeping in our living room for the past week now, and it looks like we’ll remain sleeping in here until we move out of this place. Oh well, them’s the breaks I guess.

Notice the gap in boards

Yesterday a crew came by to clean and dry the carpets in our bedroom. Well, that’s what we — and they — thought would happen until the actually got a chance to see the water damage.

No walls here

Drying the carpets ended up turning into them tearing the carpet out. Once the carpet was removed the baseboard and tacking board were exposed and they were completely saturated with water. That means that the walls needed to come down too. Underneath the sheet rock of our walls was sopping wet insulation. Healthy.

The carpet and the walls were removed and thrown into the dumpster out behind our building. Now we’re on the third floor so the flooding didn’t come from below, it came from over head. Yup, the ceiling. Take ‘er down, and don’t forget the insulation!

What’s left of our bedroom is the pictures you see on the right and below. Our floor has a 9×12 foot area of exposed plywood. The wall is completely open to the elements as the only thing between the inside of our bedroom and the cold December New England air is a thin layer of wood and vinyl siding. The ceiling has a 1×12 foot hole that leads directly up into the attic with no protection what so ever.

The crew that came to help left an industrial de-humidifier and air blower to bring the humidity level in the room down to something less than an unhealthy percentage. Until the leaking is stopped and the humidity is lowered we can’t have a full assessment of the damage. After that’s completed THEN a contractor can come in start making our apartment habitable again.

Maybe sometime in 2008 we’ll be able to step foot in our bedroom without wearing a jacket or with a fear of stepping on a loose nail.