Kitchen Nighmares, Part 1

March 21, 2013.  That date is permanently affixed in my memory as the day of the Great Kitchen Flood of 2013.  It's the day I will forever regret not listening to that persistent, anxious inner voice that kept telling me I needed to be home when the plumber came to snake the pipe that ran away from my next-door neighbor's sink, even if it meant cancelling my hair appointment or leaving before my hair was dry.  It's the day that started a stressful six-week ordeal with clean-up specialists and contractors and customer service reps that didn't seem that interested in truly serving the customer.  

It all started with a potato. 

A few days before the flood, my neighbor's college-aged daughter had innocently but naively put some potato peels in their kitchen disposal, not knowing that potato peels make disposals constipated.  By so doing, she clogged the common pipe we share in our little condo building.  I tried to be good-natured about it.  An honest mistake, I thought.  A minor inconvenience.  

Four days, some ill-advised Draino (neighbor's daughter again), and two amateur snake attempts later, the neighbor's landlord called a professional plumber to come clear the clog.  Naturally, the plumber was four hours late.  Naturally he said he didn't need access to my unit to do his job (even though the past week of not being able to use my kitchen drain clearly showed that what happened in my neighbor's kitchen pipe directly affected mine).  Naturally I wasn't home when disaster struck.

The plumber's professional snake entered the pipe in my neighbor's kitchen.  Instead of going down the pipe to where the clog was, it took the path of least resistance across the T that joined our two pipes and into the pipe under my sink.  He must have applied a lot of force, because he eventually popped a hole in my P-trap.  Feeling something give way, he figured he'd cleared the clog and began running water from my neighbor's faucet--which ran right out that hole and into my kitchen, streaming down into the kitchen of my downstairs neighbor and shorting out his microwave.

Ten minutes later, I came home to find my kitchen under an inch of water.  I screamed, then went into the hall and knocked on my neighbor's door.  I'd been talking to the landlord's wife while I was getting my hair done and I knew the plumber was probably still there.  


(I wish I'd had the presence of mind at that moment to take photos of the mess.)

"You got a hole in your P-trap," he pronounced when he came to look at the busted pipe.  My neighbor, his landlord, the landlord's wife and I were all sopping up dirty water with paper towels.  

"You did that," I replied. "That wasn't there this morning.  You did that with your snake."

The plumber grimly and silently went out to his truck and got a replacement P-trap, which he fitted on the pipe while the rest of us continued to clean up the water.  

Later that night, I went to Target for a new mop, then cleaned the floor with Murphy's Oil Soap.  I propped up the two small rugs in the dining room that had also gotten wet when the water spilled over the threshold from the kitchen.  I set up a small fan to blow on the bloated, water-logged particle-board floor of the cupboard under the sink, where the flood had originated.  Exhausted and tense, I finally went to bed.

A couple of days later, the particle board seemed dry but it still looked a little swollen and emitted a funny odor.  At the neighbor's landlord's suggestion, I called a water clean-up company to come check for residual moisture and mold.  A field supervisor from the company came to inspect the kitchen, using a high-tech gadget about twice the size of my first cell phone, that could detect elevated moisture levels under the floor and cupboards.  He'd put the gadget over a spot on the floor or inside a cupboard, press a button, and the hand on the dial would swing to one side on a moisture spectrum.  Whenever the gadget detected dangerously high levels of moisture, it let out a short burst of urgent beeps. 

He found elevated moisture in a number of spots and we both saw mold in the cut-out at the side of the cabinet under the sink. He recommended "remediation" involving tearing out the floor and the base cabinets, discarding the moldy cabinet, sealing off the room and the vent, and completely purifying the air.  I was suddenly terrified that death from mold spore inhalation was imminent if I didn't follow his advice immediately.  

Several emails, a few phone calls, and some very direct requests later, the plumbing company agreed to pay for the remediation and to pay to have the previously sodden dining room rugs cleaned. I scheduled the remediation and sent out the call to some friends that I needed help clearing everything out of my kitchen cabinets tout de suite!  

Here's what my kitchen looked like shortly before the remediation company arrived.  

We put everything from the cupboards into the dining room--on top of, underneath, and around my dining room table--and pushed the table itself up against the wall farthest from the kitchen doorway.  My friend Sue had the wonderful forethought to bring over four large Rubbermaid containers that proved invaluable, and I also got several banana boxes from a local grocery store.  I discovered as we were emptying the cabinets just how much water I had stored away for emergencies. 

(What the above picture doesn't show are all the boxes underneath the table pushed up against the wall.)

Little did I know at the time just how long I'd be living with those Rubbermaid containers and banana boxes, washing dishes in the bathtub.  

Next up:  Remediation.