Roots

On the eve of my triumph, disaster has struck. Apparently some malevolent higher power decided that I was not serious about moving on to the other floors yet, and decided to force my hand.

Yesterday, at about 2pm, the downstairs toilet started overflowing. With sewage. I called the city, because it was happening even when the water was off, and they sent out some guys to check our main sewer line, which turned out to be clear. They showed us some pictures of near our drain and said they think it might be blocked with roots. Our neighbor was having the same problem, so we were hoping it was the city line, and not a side line. Turns out that our side line and the neighbor's are one and the same.

Roto-Rooter wound up coming out at about 9pm and taking out a whole mess of tree roots. They think that's what caused the blockage, and since both we and our neighbor were doing laundry at the time, anything that went into our sewer line came back up through our toilet and his bathtub.

We spent many hours yesterday bailing out the bathroom using every towel in the house and Stanley the Shop-Vac. When the plumber left, we made the belated discovery that the overflow had also come up the laundry drain in the garage, so we had some additional sopping up to do.

I will spare you the pictures of the overflow, because most of it was extremely raw sewage and it was groooooss. The "water" was about an inch deep at its highest. I am not sure we will ever be clean. We had to go to a friend's house last night just to shower, because the plumber put herbicide into the pipe that had to sit dry for 6-8 hours.

Today, the disinfecting begins. Everything in the bathroom and garage are getting a coat of bleach water followed with a Lysol chaser. Some of the water made it out of the bathroom, and into the hallway carpet. It's soaked all the way to the floor, so I decided to pull it up and plan on painting that floor next, even though it presents certain cat-related logistical challenges.

 

The floor was so wet that the drywall gunk on it scraped right up, and I was able to wipe most of it off. Looks like I need to pick out some new paint and patterns. What goes with "poopstain"?

 

Right now, we're not sure if there is still water under the bathroom cabinets, and the only way to find out is to pull out the sink, plumbing and cabinet. I'm going to give it a day or two and see how things look before we embark on that, but I've got nightmares of disgusting poop-mold creatures growing under there. We may be breeding some kind of comic book nightmare monster. I'll call him Feclops. He is mighty, and he comes wielding his twin blades: Dysentery and Gastroenteritis.