When There's Smoke......

there's usually fire. That, of course, is a good thing for roasting marshmallows, a candlelit dinner, the fire pit on a cool fall night, but not so much when it's in one of the walls of my house. That's right folks, we haven't even been in the house for 2 months and have already had our first major incident.

The picture above is what one of the walls in our garage currently looks like. The pipe and faucet above go to an outdoor faucet in the backyard that had been dripping. This past Sat they went to work to repair it, which included welding****.

That afternoon J and I noticed that the smoke smell continued to linger in the house. He went downstairs to find a garage full of smoke, but thankfully, no flames. We have 2 smoke detectors in the garage and both had been checked 2 days before by our alarm system company, but somehow neither of them went off. He cut a small section of sheet rock away and sprayed the fire extinguisher in it, but the smoke continued, so he cut the large whole in the pic. The hardyplank (SP???) that is between the outer brick and inner sheet rock had been smoldering all afternoon. We had been in the yard most of the day with the garage door open, so nobody noticed the smoke since it was burning so slowly and just going outside. The only reason the smoke finally built up enough to notice it was because J had shut the garage doors when we came inside.

To top it off, J and I were about to go on our first date since little man's arrival. Mom had helped us with yard work all afternoon and was staying for the evening to watch the kiddos for us. So we had both just showered and dressed to go out to dinner and a movie and ended up sweaty and dirty all over again to deal with the above. By the time everything was under control and we felt (mostly) comfortable with leaving, we quickly grabbed sandwiches at Firehouse Subs(ironic, isn't it) and ate them in the movie theater. I felt sooo rude doing that, but I excused it in my mind since I think it falls in the category of "extenuating circumstances"---house on fire and first date after having a baby.

The evening made me quite teary and I felt so shaken up by all of it. I tried as much as possible to not "what if" the night.....as in what if we hadn't smelled the smoke, what if it had started burning the sheet rock and wood...during the night, what if my mother and children had been injured while I was enjoying myself at the movies.....can you see my mind reeling? It was terrifying, but I am thankful that we are all safe and there is no major damage. J and his dad will easily be able to repair it.

Moral of the story-go hug and kiss your kids and spouse, make sure your smoke detectors are working properly, and if you smell smoke-check it out IMMEDIATELY!!

****I will give the disclaimer that J and his dad are fantastic with house projects-they know how to fix everything! Nothing like this has EVER happened to either of them in the past, and I trust both of them completely to work on any part of our home.