Dishwasher Betrayal

We decided to leave SUPER early on Tuesday morning to tackle the 12 hour drive back to our house.  We were all excited to be back at home sweet home after being gone almost 3 weeks.  It was going to be the first time we got home while it was still light outside and everyone was just ready to relax in our own comfy house.  Fast forward 12 hours....around 7pm.....We came home to our beautiful house and the first thing we always check for is if the A/C is still working.  It was!  Whew!  We head into the house and I turn the corner to the kitchen and am greeting by my entire kitchen standing in water, with mold all over the place.

The rugs were COVERED in fuzzy mold...all three of them.  :(  The upside is, that these rugs may have prevented further damage because they soaked up SO much water.

I set my bags down and got out our wet-vac and went to work sucking up the water.  I got about 4 gallons worth off the tile.

Then Shawn went to work ripping out the betraying piece of equipment.  It lasted 11 years, but it sure went out with a bang.

This was the mold all over the drywall behind the dishwasher and up the sides of the cabinets.

Within about 2 hours, we had someone coming in and beginning the process of drying out the kitchen.  These fans sounding so loud that you had to yell to be heard while they were going.  They told us they were going to need to run 24/7 for the next 5 days.  Oh and it was probably going to heat up the downstairs quite a bit.  Fun!

  Here I am holding the "Good News" jar...ever the optimist!  I am trying to find the good in each little part of this and there are so many positives.  Yes, this is a mess and yes it's inconvenient and yes, it's taking a large chunk of our savings to fix it.  But, we are fine and it's going to be ok.  It's material possessions and they don't mean much in the big picture.

So this is the current status of our kitchen.  It has been 24 days without a kitchen.  Insurance is paying for all but $150 a week in food money.  We have visited 31 different restaurants in that time, some multiple times.  It has been bittersweet!  It's fun to go out to eat...it's fun to try new places...It's wonderful to not have to cook especially at the hottest time of the year....but it is hard to feel healthy after all this.  It's hard to work your schedule around leaving the house every time it's time to eat.  Our taste buds are burnt out! We STILL have yet to have a plan in place because our adjuster wanted us to try to fix the kitchen in a way that every contractor and professional has said isn't possible...so we continue going back and forth and jumping through hoops to get this kitchen fixed in a logical way.  In the meantime we are running out of new restaurants to try!