'After the flood, all the colors came out'

So. 2 Saturdays ago, I went to Strathmere, planning on spending an hour or two in the cottage. The water had been turned on earlier in the week, so I wanted to pick up the mothballs, open the windows, clean out the fridge and turn it on. The cottage is Winterized for cold weather so basically I wanted to 'unWinterize' it. My plans for a happy time daydreaming about the awesome Summer to come were cut short though, when I discovered the water pipe running thru the livingroom had a tiny little leak. A leak that soaked the livingroom carpet and the bathroom carpet so much that the carpet squished water when you stepped on it.

The next 4 hours were spent trying to save the carpet. The bathroom carpet is small and I wanted to get it out of there anyway, so I just pulled that out and trashed it.
My aunt was down planting flowers around the house, so she helped me move all the livingroom furniture into the kitchen. The bed blocked the doorway, so her doggie Moose had to crawl under the bed from the other side to get to us in the livingroom! I soon discovered that the old carpet was still under the current carpet, and it was soaking wet too. The lining under it was mostly powder now, and under it was 60 year old linoleum, which was also soaking wet. Pulling that all back, we saw that the wood floor was wet too. Major panic. So we pulled out the old carpet and the linoleum. I borrowed a wet-vac and soaked up alot of the water from the carpet. Then we draped the current carpet over the kitchen chairs so that the wood floors and the underside of the carpet could dry. It was hard, miserable work. Opened the windows and turned on the window and ceiling fans.

I came back the next day to close the windows and turn off the fans, and then I didn't go back again until today. I was kinda afraid to. But thankfully I found the rug all dry and no musty smells (I had dumped a box of baking soda and carpet fresh all over the rug and sprayed it down with a ton of Lysol, which apparently worked)
This is what the livingroom looked like today with the carpet draped over the chairs -



I wanted to rearrange the furniture anyway, so now I can start with an empty room! I put the rug back in place and plan on going back Saturday to play with the furniture.

Before I went into the cottage today, I was greeted by these very bright and pretty flowers in the windowbox (my aunt had planted them on that terrible Saturday) They were a happy sign that the carpet was going to be alright, and that the awesome Summer is still on it's way.