It has been raining, on and off, for the past couple of days. Last night, and for part of this morning, it was raining quite hard. I noticed that there was a puddle of water on the floor that had never been there before. Time to call my homeowners insurance company!
Under my computer desk, there is a box. Or, I should say, there was a box. The box was once partially full of office supplies that I tend to go through rather quickly. The amount is too small to be considered a stock pile, but maybe a bit larger than a “stash”.
Today, I noticed that this box, which was just the ordinary, cardboard, variety, was partially soaked. I knew that it had been raining, but, that didn’t really explain how the box got wet. You see, the box sits under my computer desk, in a corner of a room. There are no windows above it, and a quick examination showed that the windows in the room did not leak when the rain hit. They were dry.
Further investigation showed that the box of office supplies was actually sitting in a puddle of water. The first thing I did was pull the box out from under the desk, and remove the office supplies that were inside it. Fortunately, the contents of the box did not experience water damage. Next, the box was taken to the trash.
It turned out that, somehow, water had leaked through the wall and onto the floor. This has never happened before, in the entire time that my husband and I had lived here. The puddle of water somehow soaked through part of the wall, near the floor. The wall itself had some small cracks in the paint, and the paint had buckled in places. This was not a flood situation. The puddle was mopped up with nothing more than a hand towel.
I’ve no idea what it will cost to make the necessary repairs to prevent the water from coming in again. My husband called the insurance company that we have a homeowners policy through. He explained the situation, and I took a photo of the damages.
The insurer is going to send a claims adjuster out to our home to assess the damage. If we end up being able to file a claim, we will have to pay down a $500 deductible before the insurance company will cover any of the cost of the repairs that are needed. Until this gets decided, there is a towel on the floor, where the puddle used to be, just in case.
Image by Reuben Strayer on Flickr