Together is Best: Hardwood floors lead to disaster

We decided on which room will be the nursery, and relocated the office stuff to the basement. The second step towards preparing our home for the new baby, was to pull up the nasty carpet upstairs and refinish the hardwood floors underneath. Sounds fairly simple, right?

Our floor company started last Monday and we moved out of our house and into the hospitality of our neighbors, Brooke and Oscar's home. Thursday morning brought the completion, and the floors look beautiful. We stayed away an extra day to let the fumes air out and moved back in on Friday night in time for my mom to come visit for the weekend. We slowly started putting the upstairs back together and things went smoothly until Sun night around 11. Shawn and I heard a soft crash somewhere below us, but couldn't identify it so went back to sleep. I got up to pee at 1:30am and heard water running downstairs. I thought maybe my mom was taking a shower, but she was asleep in the guest bedroom. I went downstairs and turned on the light in the kitchen to see water POURING from the light fixture. The ceiling was bulging, there was water all over the floor and flooding down into the basement. We turned the water main off, mopped up the mess, and went to bed with visions of thousands of dollars worth of damage and prayers that our homeowners insurance would cover it in our heads.

Shawn and I flipped a coin and decided that since he stayed home for the water heater explosion a few months ago, that it was my turn to handle the house disaster. I got up at 7:15 to call work and beg for coverage at my office hours, and began the day. My first call was to USAA to start a claim. Courtney was very nice, but of course made it sound like our coverage was limited and if there was any prior damage we were going to be screwed. She told me to call the plumber and get the extent of the damage before officially filing a claim. The plumber said they could be here the next day to which I explained the extent of the emergency and unacceptability of that plan. Two hours later, the plumber showed up. After exposing an 18" x 24" hole in the ceiling, he discovered that when the floor people replaced one of the boards in my closet, they pierced a water pipe. The crash was some drywall in the sub floor collapsing under the weight of 6 days of water accumulation! The floor people are taking responsibility of course, but now I have drywallers tearing out huge sections of damp drywall in my kitchen and another weeks worth of house disruptions.