Incident Report, Home Edition

Last weekend, our townhouse flooded, sort of.  I say "sort of" because we weren't home at the time and don't know how much water actually came into our home.  It couldn't have been much of a flood, because the floor is only damaged about half-way through our dining room.  A water line at our next door neighbor's home burst, and it flowed downhill and flooded the home on the other side. On our side, we don't think it flooded except a little bit in the laundry room in the bathroom, but it certainly did mess up the floors all along the wall we share with the neighbor.

And how long do you think it took our landlords to call someone to come over to assess the damage?  Go on, guess. 

That was a trick question.  They haven't done it yet!  They haven't done anything to assess the water damage yet.  Oh, sure, they've been over to the house and looked at the floors and generally agreed that the floors were ruined where the water had been.  But they haven't, say, pulled up one of the boards and peeked to see if mildew had begun to form.  They haven't sent over a professional of any sort--you name it, flooring professional, plumbing professional, water removal specialist, general handyman--no one who would know about repairing these kinds of situations.  We have only our landlords' assessment to guide our actions, and by "assessment," of course, I refer to their staring at the floors and lamenting how much it cost them to install.

On the plus side, the lack of action on the part of our landlords, coupled with the growing hint of a mildew-y aroma, has indeed guided our actions in that it has motivated us to start going through our belongings as if we were making an assessment of our own, the kind you do when you're moving and look at everything in your house and say, "I'm not sure this is worth the effort of packing and moving it."  The amount of stuff we've thrown out or put in a to-give-away pile makes it look as though we really are moving.  Which is good, because given the situation, we probably will need to move soon.  I'm not going to live in a mildew-infested home (again).

And in other news, our hot water heater went out on Wednesday night. The landlords called the plumber, and it was repaired this morning.  Glad they were so on top of that particular water-related issue.