On a lighter note?

Yep.  You gotta take your smiles where you can get them.  Today we phoned Allstate and got all set up for the adjuster to come and see our flood zone at the Other House.  The plumber called hours earlier than we expected so we unexpectedly ended up spending most of the day down there.  I have a Scan Gauge installed in Red and on the drive down The Tramp managed to hit 30mpg!  Cool.  Red isn't supposed to be able to do that.  It's a small thing really, but when you need a smile it's a great thing!  :-)

Strangely enough, the plumber didn't really find anything wrong with the offending toilet.  We aren't sure what to think about that and will need to be talking to American Home Shield and Allstate about it again.  Allstate did arrange for Servpro to come in and start remediation.  It was funny seeing them pull up in the bright green van I've only seen on the rather awful TV commercials.  We were impressed by the professionals who got out of the van however.  Lots of forms to fill out and sign before they got down to business, and what a job they did.  (Note to selves: the next time we have a flood we will call the insurance company before we spend hours trying to clean it up ourselves!)

The powder room is on the other side of that wall.  Their moisture meter indicated the concrete under the living room floor was quite wet so some of the vinyl plank was first to go.

The baseboard was pulled from that wall and there was already white mold growing on the wet boards.  Yick!

In The Tramp's old study, the green carpet was ripped up and when that baseboard was removed the corner closest to the powder room was sprouting black fuzzy mold.  Gross!

In my old sewing room (also green carpet ripped up) there was green mold on the wainscoting.  Ugh!

When the wainscoting was ripped off (this is the same corner) we could see the wet on the drywall.  Gack!

The vinyl in the powder room itself was soaked underneath.  Ewwww.

Then they cut the walls up about two feet to expose the wet sills.  Bless his heart, The Tramp did a little dance amongst the wreckage to cheer me up.  :-)

At this point we left the Servpro men to it.  They still needed to install the blowers and dehumidifiers.  I'm told it will take about four days to dry and they will monitor it every day.  Can you imagine if we hadn't decided to call the insurance company and just "let it dry?"  OMG.  Live and learn.

I did actually sew for an hour or so this evening.  Hard because my back hurt.  Moan, moan.  ;-)  Only about six of the 36 blocks are put together but I don't feel badly since there are already so many hours into fabric prep, cutting, and piecing the parts of the danged blocks.  I'm looking forward to being with my quilting bee ladies tomorrow morning and after a quick look in at the Other House I can come home and concentrate on some power sewing.  :-)