There is no other way to put this. I broke my house.Let me explain the sequence of events here: 1.) Go to Vegas for my first vacation ever in 2 years. 2.) Come home four days later to a house that is 31 degrees Farenheit inside… there were ice sickle hanging from all faucets and my toilet bowl was Frozen Solid. (I have photographic proof of this… but wait, it gets better.) 3.) I call my boyfriend. I have never seen a toilet bowl frozen solid before but I am sure this does not Bode Well for my house… he, being the son of a plumber, tells me to shut off the water main and turn on my heat up so that if there is a leak it won’t flood my house over night. 4.) I find the water main, crank it toward “off” as hard as I can, bump my heat up to 70 and go somewhere warm to sleep. 5.) I stop by my house 8 hours later, and find, instead of my half-finished kitchen with adorable red cabinets…a waterfall. It was literally raining from the kitchen ceiling down to the kitchen floor… and from the kitchen floor down to the basement.

This is what went through my head:

Oh. Dear. God.

There are two very good words to describe this… Major. Catastrophe. I scrambled downstairs to shut off the water main, which I unknowingly had only partially shut off before (due to the frozenness of everything). I then scrambled back upstairs and gaped for a minute or two at the fact that my kitchen ceiling was falling down, and my kitchen floor was warping up. Then I proceeded to call every number I could to get a hold of my father-who is the expert on such matters as what in the hell to do when you have a broken house.

After several moments of gut wrenching panic he called me back and reminded me of the one word that has saved my life… Insurance. Oh yes, I will never never never complain about insurance premiums again. Ever. You know why? Because for the low, low cost of a $500 deductable… all the broken pipes, soaked insulation, destroyed ceiling, floors, and entire upstairs bathroom are going to be replaced. Oh, and my broken furnace is going to get fixed too. (It is currently 38 degrees inside my house.) On the down side… my freshly painted adorable red kitchen cabinets are going to be kaput. Oh yeah. And I’m going to be homeless for the next couple of months or so. Also my ingenious caulking job (see below) was all for nothing.

But-and I am usually not a sliver-lining kind of person per se-this will probably work out a lot better for me in the long run… the plumbing on this 130 year old house was going to have to go eventually, at least it went before I had the whole house finished. Stay tuned for pictures of my demolished kitchen and bathtub. (and the ice sickles hanging from my faucets) .

~K

Ahh, yes. The frozen solid toilet bowl, and bathtub icecicle . Real cool.

Tags: the big freeze