One morning this week, like every morning, I moseyed up to the window in our bedroom to peer out to the street. Most of the time, I like doing that to snoop on whatever is happening in the front of the house. Other times, I just like to admire the beautiful new grass we have on our front yard.

Unfortunately, this morning, I was greeted with an unwelcome surprise. I walked up to the window and felt something bumpy under my toes. Our beautiful hardwood floors that we just refinished had bowed up a teeny tiny bit. I brought the ultimate judge (my mom) to assess the situation and she said that we caught it early and we’re lucky. Oh, and that it’s really not as bad as we think. That was a huge relief!

Now, we had this problem when we first moved into our house which is why we chose to refinish the floors and replace those boards. Many dollars and weeks later, we had what seemed to be brand new floors. It took much longer to refinish the floors than we initially expected because it was really hard to get all the moisture out of the wood. Several times, the wood started bowing up before they could coat the floors. So they had to replace a few boards, pump up the heat in the house, and cross their fingers that the wood was in a condition to refinish. The fact that it happened after they were refinished wasn’t a huge surprise but we still didn’t expect this to happen.

After some investigation, we concluded that this water damage is from our new sprinklers. The water was hitting the side of the house and, since the sprinklers went off twice a day, the soil didn’t have time to dry up. The water somehow got in under the house or through the side of the house and caused this damage. So, we immediately turned off the sprinklers, called up our local garden store, and ordered the plants that were in our landscaping plans to line the front of the house. We noticed a crack in the siding under the window and on the side of the house so CJ caulked it to seal the opening. We suspect that’s how the water got in to the floors.

We kept the sprinklers off to let it all dry out and are hoping that the plants will soak up some of the water and block the sprinklers going forward. Our gardener came over the next morning to reposition the sprinklers so they didn’t hit the front of the house. Hopefully, that should fix the problem but as an added precaution, we might have some professionals come over next week to give us an estimate for lining the underside of our house with plastic to prevent any further damage. Stay tuned.