Oh What a Night :(

So yesterday is the first day in weeks that we were able to stay home and not go anywhere. The kids were in the doldrums a bit because of Grandma leaving, which made them stir-crazy and snappish. At work, his first day back, Buck's store did Christmas numbers in April with sick calls galore. He also did our grocery shopping and arrived home wiped out. 

About midnight, all the fire alarms started shrieking--they're wired together throughout the house. I figured the boys' battery was shot again, pulled the thing by memory in the dark without my glasses on, and the shrieking subsided--momentarily (and not a single kid woke up! Ugh!! doesn't make me feel great about a real emergency in the middle of the night . . .)

When I returned to the battery cupboard, I noticed the dishwasher was sitting in a puddle of water. Two of our close friends' families have their kitchens torn apart (for 5-6 months!) because of leaky dishwashers, so I've been hyper-vigilant about ours. When we bought the house three years ago, we had to replace the dishwasher (pump hadn't been run in 18 months, it busted, new machine for us). Well, the new machine has already been repaired twice (under warranty) and makes so much noise when it runs (and never dries) that you have to practically shout to be heard over it. Earlier in the day, I noticed the brackets had come loose and the whole thing was tipping forward when we opened the door. I told the kids to let it be; when Buck came home he drilled it back in place, and then I started the cycle.

Back to the water . . . just to be sure, I ran downstairs to the classroom, and wouldn't you know it, the fire alarm was running water! I grabbed a towel, unfastened the fire alarm which started everything beeping like mad again (the sounds changed from all at the same time, to more like they were chasing each other in circles through the house, each taking a turn in the shriek relay--it was awesome) :( 

Soooo, Buck came down with a bucket and a screw driver. He poked holes in the ceiling around the detector box (the water wasn't inside the box, just dripping in a circle around it). Good thing we learned to repair ceilings at our friends' home last fall :) The carpet was a bit wet, but the weirdest thing is, the detector isn't under the dishwasher--it's five feet out in the middle of the room. So . . . was there water running through the floor and the ceiling?

This morning while Buck was at work, I remembered our neighbors recently had an issue with their dishwasher too. I asked how they'd dried out their floors, and Mark came over with a fan to take a look. He helped pull up several boards and trim along with the soaking pad below. At the same time Buck texted to say our other neighbor Mark (there are four of them :) was bringing a dehumidifier over later. "It's good to know Marks!" texted my husband.

I've been emailing the repairman who has fixed our oven, washing machine, and dryer 10x. He estimates a fix would cost $225 . . . for a 3-year-old, 2x broken, leaky, noisy machine. Blech! It's maybe $75 more to just get a new one. Not the appliance I had planned to replace AGAIN before we move sometime next year, probably. Anyway . . . 

The water ring looked much more large and yellow last night.
A patch revealed that it likely had had a similar issue before.

The kids were super helpful fighting back the mountain of leftover dishes, washing them by hand. We have enough paper left over from the party to hopefully suffice until we can figure out what to do about the floors--which according to what I can find online have long been discontinued :(

Boogers!!!