I had mentioned previously that I thought our abundance of water in the furnace and laundry room was due to a pressure relief valve on our water heater giving way. Seems it was not the case. As I discovered later, even though I closed the water main as tightly as I thought I could, it was still slightly open, and water was still leaking out the pipe rupture just beyond the main valve. So, that mystery solved.
Remember the 1/2 inch or so of ice in the laundry room? Well, when we fired our heater back up, all that ice melted, and that water needed somewhere to go. And go it did, over the already soaked hall way carpet, right in to the office. Where we had books stacked. Oops. Thankfully, we didn't lose anything important.
We're pretty much convinced the previous owners had ferrets (the major cause of Crystal's and Jonathan's congestion). The down stairs--especially the family room, which got a fair share of wet carpet too--reeked today from all the moisture and whatever pet stuff was in the carpet. Great smell.
A bit of good news. One of the wood panels in the family room had pulled away from the wall due to all the moisture, and what should be found behind it? Clean, pristine, sheet rock. If this pattern holds for the other walls and rooms, it will greatly reduce our remodel cost. Woohoo!