Yucky Mess

So about a month ago on a day when the kids had a early release day (they get out of school 2 hours early) the girls were playing in the basement while we were waiting for Ashton to get home from school.  Out of no where Abbie came running to me while I was doing some dishes and told me that all of her big coloring books were wet and that "someone" had colored on the wall with a green marker, but it wasn't her.  I immediately went to investigate and found soaking wet carpet and mold.  YUCK!  I was so grossed out.  It was behind our big Ikea shelving unit full of toys.  We started moving baskets and baskets of toys so that we could move the shelf to see what was going on.  This is what we found.

don't you just love Abbie's description of the mold- coloring on the wall.  

So first things first we had to contact our landlord, no big deal except he lives in Vegas and can't really do anything from there.  He is great to work with though and got somebody here to look at it the next day.  After some confusion about which company was doing what we now have a huge mess in our basement which they are coming today to fix.  We had to let it sit for a while with a dehumidifier helping to dry things out.  Here is what we are dealing with now...

Luckily for us it wasn't as bad as it seemed at first.  There was only superficial mold all of the structural things were fine.  The plumbing guy said we caught it really quickly.  That made me feel better because I was thinking what a terrible housekeeper I must be to have let it get as far as it did.  Now if i could just get my house back to normal.  This is my test, patience. I can't do anything to hurry people along, it isn't "my" house and I am not footing the bill so I can't get anyone to work faster.  And my basement in a continual mess of toys that have no real home while we wait for it to get fixed.  Oh and the bottom of our shelves were wet and we had to try and dry that out too, so the toys couldn't be put back into it because it is propped against the pool table (not ours but came with the house, wish it wasn't there) drying out.  I think it is salvageable but not sure yet.  

What caused it all you might ask?  The value to the sprinklers outside has been leaking ever since we moved in and probably before that.  We blew out the lines in the fall and turned off the valve just like we should have, but it has been leaking all winter and freezing.  When it started warming up outside the ice melted and had no where else to go but into our house.  The valve got replaced and we should be fine once the wall gets patched up.