We woke this morning, at approximately 3am, to the sound of heavy rain. Startlingly, it did not seem to be coming from the open window next to the bed, but within the house. It is interesting how quickly we went from "deep sleep" to "wildly awake". It turns out the toilet tank on the third floor spontaneously split down the side last night.
The good news is that we had just made it home after being gone for 4 days and it just as easily could have happened on Friday and we'd have arrived home to a catastrophic problem. One has to take one's silver linings where one can...
The bad news is that we have major water damage down three stories (third floor to the basement). It appears we are going to lose part of the second floor bathroom ceiling. There is a great deal of wet horsehair plaster and streaking on several walls where water ran between the floors. We lost a bit of ceiling in the basement, too.
I was *very* lucky as to my shelved books. I lost a set of Little Journeys in limp leather and about a dozen or so other books. However, the water really just ran down one section of the one of the shelving walls and I try not to let things actually touch the wall (something that no book will do in the future). Given that there are about 1500 books on the shelves on the first floor under the natural failure path for water, I am actually very pleased. It could have been so much worse.
That said, the front of the house smells like wet plaster, we have at least one wall that will need to be heavily repaired and probably two ceiling areas. The plumber has already been here and capped the line until we replace the toilet. The insurance human is due soon. Chaos reigns supreme. So much to do already. Urgh.
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