How I Spent My Fall Break

Remember when you were in school and your teacher asked you to write an essay on how you spent you summer vacation? I couldn't help but recall that when I think of how we spent our fall break.

We were looking so forward to visiting our son and his bride at their apartment in Chicago. The downtown Marriott had a king size bed reserved for us for after we strolled around town with them after having had marvelous dinners. However, on the morning of the trip, I noticed the wood flooring in front of the refrigerator in the kitchen was warping. Something was terribly wrong! When we pulled out the refrigerator, we saw water and when we looked at the back of the wet refrigerator we saw that the ice maker tube had popped off!

We immediately contacted our insurance agent who put us in touch with a wonderful contractor who spent several hours with us. He recommended drying the wood floors because we had an obligation to do whatever we could to help save the floor. So this is how we spent our fall break: with mats, hoses, dryers and alot of noise. Hopefully it would work.

To keep this on a positive note, it was interesting to watch the process. I didn't know there were mats that sucked the water out from under hardwood floors.

Some water had leaked onto the floor in the great room behind the refrigerator wall

and down to the basement ceiling. You can see the water spots here.

So there were dryers and a big dehumidifier in the basement too.

Unfortunately we were not able to save the kitchen floor because a large crack was noticed in a piece of the wood in front of the refrigerator. The decision was made to replace the whole floor.

Once the decision was made to replace the floor, the affected part of the floor was removed to continue with the drying process. You can see here where they cut out the damaged wood. 

This is behind the refrigerator. Lovely, huh? I am showing you this because I want to tell you about what the GE repairman said. He told us to change out the white plastic tubing that brings the water to the refrigerator. He told us to replace it with a braided one. He also said the incident occurred due to a water valve problem in the refrigerator.

Here you can see the replaced water hose.

I am just now catching my breath. It's been a very busy week with all the helpers coming and going in house. When something like this happens you just go with it and when things settle down you wonder what really happened!

So after my lovely fall break, I returned to school. Look at what I saw when I entered the door!

and further down the hallway!!!!

I wonder what happened at school during fall break!?!  Gotta have a sense of humor about it.