I became a homeowner again in April. I knew it would have its risks; its perils, but I did not know it would happen so soon. We bought a house with a recently finished basement, where the fabulous master bedroom is. Of course we had it inspected before we actually purchased it, and there was no evidence of any basement leaks, and why would anyone willingly install carpet in an area where there could potentially be more water leaks? My mind was at rest about it. So the day the huge hail storm hit, I thought nothing of it. Until I sat on my bed for a bit. When I got up, my hip was soaking wet and I had no idea what it was from. I looked around to find that the window well above my bed had standing water, which was leaking into my room and directly onto my bed. I grabbed some towels, sopped up what I could, and asked Husband for the ShopVac. He proceeded to vacuum out the window well, while I sat helpless, having already put towels down. Once he was done, he came in to help me with the bed and carpet. Upon actually beginning to extract the water, we realized just how bad it had gotten: the carpet was soaked much farther from the window than I originally thought, and as we pulled the mattress off of the foundation, saw that the water had gotten halfway across the bed. My mattress is memory foam; it had absorbed that water like a sponge. The water on my hip hadn't been just incidental transfer - my weight on the mattress had squeezed the water up from underneath it. The water from outside. The water that had been filtered through the dirt on the ground. Eeeeewwww.
Neither of us having hands large enough to wring it out, we threw away the mattress and bought a new one (a horror story for another time). We pulled up the carpet and had fans blowing on it for 4 days, but still had to throw out half the carpet pad too, because the kind we have is spill resistant, and the fans couldn't penetrate it to dry it out. Husband drilled holes in the wall to help air it out. He pulled up the windowsill and vacuumed that as well. After all this, when pulling out more drywall, we found some mold. We can't be positive that it came from this particular leak or something unrelated, but the costs seem to just keep racking up. Insurance? You ask. Not covered. Of course. Sigh. We'll keep working at it, hoping for the best and having credit cards at the ready in case of the worst. Eventually, when all the water is gone, we'll have a bedroom again.
