This has been an eventful week for me.

Over the past few days, I’ve learned more about what happens when a home floods than I ever wanted to know.

Monday morning, while eating breakfast, we started a load of laundry, then briefly went out to the garage.

When I came back into the house, I stepped into an inch of water in the laundry room, caused by an overflowing  washing machine.

Then, I almost did something really stupid as I considered unplugging the washing machine.

Fortunately, I shut off the water flow valve instead and avoided getting electrocuted.

I could have gone into the garage and shut off the main breaker, but that didn’t occur to me at the moment.

My first call was to my State Farm agent, who then called CleanPro, his recommended emergency services contractor.

We quickly moved everything off the floors in the adjoining rooms and placed towels in a futile attempt to stop the water from flowing into adjoining areas.

CleanPro showed up within two hours, pumped the water out, removed the washer and dryer, removed water-soaked flooring, pulled back carpets, and installed high-capacity fans to begin the drying process.

After five days, but the house is now dry and the carpets were reinstalled this morning.

The insurance adjustor was here for three hours yesterday and we’re now awaiting State Farm’s settlement offer.

It’s possible that we will differ on the approach to the needed repairs, which has created considerable anxiety.

The damages are likely to exceed $10,000 despite reacting to the problem within a matter of minutes.

Next comes selecting the contractor(s) to do the repair work, selecting new flooring materials, and enduring more disruption in our lives as those repairs are completed.

This will be very challenging with my busy real estate practice that’s mostly conducted from my home office.

The damaged hardwood floors will have to be replaced because I can’t move out of the house for several days during refinishing; not to mention the dust and inability to mix new replacement hardwood with existing aged hardwood.

We’ve already cancelled a planned first outing with our RV next week so we can focus on getting our home put back together.

While it wasn’t a factor in our flooding incident, we will never again start our washer or dishwasher and leave either of them unattended as we’ve done in the past.