What a Sh*t Show

I’ve been on the fence about writing this post for months now. But I did warn you that there always seems to be something crazy going on in our lives. I have a story to tell. It’s drama filled, suspenseful, and quite frightening. It might be too much to hear. But mostly, I still want my friends to come over to our house, and after they hear this, they just might be too disgusted. This is the story about our septic system backing up into our kitchen.

Yes, you heard that right. Sh*t in the kitchen. Brace yourself for a sh*t ton of sh*t puns and heavy use of an asterisk in place of an ‘i’. Somehow that little star makes us feel better about cursing like a sailor in print. (insert shoulder shrug)

It started as a lovely Thursday morning in May. We weren’t moving very quickly, as distance learning has created a new pace of life in our home. It’s a more relaxed, go-with-the-flow pace. Chris was the first one up, as usual.  He made his way downstairs expecting to enjoy a little breakfast and tv before heading into the mudroom office to work. His unsuspecting feet never imagined they’d round the corner right into a pool of toilet water. Not just any toilet water; the kind that went down, then came back up…bringing dirty little friends along too.

I rounded the stairwell not too long after Chris. I’m not sure if it was the funky energy in the house or the screaming of the Ring alarm he triggered when he opened the back door to check out the septic tank, but I knew I had to get up right then. I entered the kitchen and saw Chris with rolls of paper towels, on all fours, trying to absorb what looked like pond water.

“What is that?!” I cried out. “No, no, no, no” was actually on repeat in my head; I already knew the answer, but didn’t want to hear it for myself. So many questions, including “where did it come from?” were frantically running in high-speed in my inner voice.

“IT’S SH*T!” Yep, he said it. He said what I was REALLY hoping he wouldn’t.

“The toilet backed up overnight and there’s sh*t everywhere. Literally sh*t!” Then he said some other things that asterisks can’t cover up.

I decided to go right to the scene of the crime; the small bathroom off our kitchen. Like any great suspenseful horror movie, I moved in slowly, braced myself for the crime scene I was about to uncover, and pushed the door back. HOLY SH*T! It really was everywhere! There was sh*t, toilet paper, and toilet water covering the floor and working its way up the walls. The toilet had emptied, but was now wearing last week’s toilet paper like a loose, wet scarf. I pulled on some rubber gloves like a mad Halloween surgeon, held my breath, and entered the room.

I picked up the garbage can and soppy toilet paper with chunks of sh*t clung to the bottom. My recently installed shiplap walls had become…you guessed it…sh*tlap. When I realized the sh*t and p*ss water had seeped between the boards on the wall, the baseboard, and under the tile, I realized the extent of what was happening. There was no coming back from this. It was a literal sh*t show.

I stopped what I was doing, called our amazing insurance agent, Ryan, and started taking pictures (most of which I regret and will not be sharing). 

When the restoration team arrived the magnitude of the damage grew. Sh*t just got real. The bathroom was the source of the overflow, obviously. From there, the septic clog contents spilled into the kitchen, crawling all the way to the dinette area. The toilet water continued to seep through the boards of the hardwood floors in the kitchen, raining down onto our personal items in the basement. The water then continued to flow, as water does, into the furnace ductwork attached to the basement ceiling. Isn’t this fun?

I bet you’re wondering how this all gets cleaned up. Well, they tore out the newly installed tile and any sh*tlap boards affected in the bathroom. They removed the kitchen island and any base cabinets that were wet. Luckily, the small slope in the floor guided the mess away from the cabinets and into the open space. They proceeded to completely tear out the hardwood floors, preparing them to be pieced back together at the doorways. Items in the basement got professionally cleaned if they were not made of fabric, and everything else got thrown away. They power-washed the basement walls and floor and will be cleaning the duct work for the furnace. 

It’s been a very long process to get our house put back together! Covid-19 has definitely added to the delays. We’ve had a few hiccups with the tile work and had to wait quite a while for the new floors to be installed and refinished. On the plus side, we’re blessed with friends that have let us stay at their cabin during multiple steps of the rebuild. This valuable time together allowed us to grow closer as two families, and I’m forever grateful for this. We’re thankful to have an amazing insurance agent and adjuster that have been so helpful along the way, and to have insurance that covered these astronomical expenses. 

All-in-all our nightmare bathroom incident has actually turned out to be ok. It’s safe for friends to visit again, I promise! And honestly, our house is probably better now than it was before all of this went down; or up?! I know it’s hard to imagine the outcome when you’re crawling on all fours, corralling toilet water first thing in the morning. Lord knows we’ve had our fair share of obstacles in life. But one thing we’ve learned to do is find the positive in these incidents. Of course something else is bound to come along soon, because…sh*t happens.