I really wanted to share the completion of our foyer and stairwell. Unfortunately, while I have made progress, it has had to move to the back-burner while we've dealt with 2 more rounds of house issues.
As you recall, just before Memorial Day our basement flooded. We worked really hard to get the carpet and pad dried and laid back out. Josh did extensive work around the foundation and with the guttering and we thought the leaks had been addressed.
We had an awesome (and exhausting) week at Vacation Bible School and came home to a not exactly cool house on Tuesday. By Wednesday it was nearly 100 outside and 85 inside. The home warranty company came out the next day. Extensive freon leak not worth fixing. Awesome.
Now I will say, we knew this was coming. We knew the systems were all original to our 1988 house and it was really a miracle they were all still kicking. We had the money saved and had factored the cost into the home purchase and determined we were still getting a great deal.
It still sucked to write that check.
So we went on an incredible 10th anniversary vacation (thanks grandparents!!) and then had a completely new system installed the day after we got back.
Furnace- check!
A/C- check!
Glad to have those large (and not remotely fun) expenses checked off the list, even if it was about a year sooner that we had hoped.
So we finish out June with a birthday party and were looking forward to the 3 day holiday weekend when...
Squish. Squish. Squish.
NO!
Ughh! Wet again!
Well, we can't do much because it's time to go pick up the big kids from Grandma's bible school.
It starts raining harder as we're driving and the wind is picking up. I get an alert on my phone that there is a tornado warning and the possibility of hail. I tell Josh we better pull under a gas station awning up ahead. Apparently a tornado was touching down about a mile east of us at that point.
We get home later that evening to find even more extensive flooding, along with our gas grill thrown across the yard and 3 sections of fence knocked over. From our back yard, about 3 blocks east and 1 block south there were tree branches down everywhere. But just in that focal area. Crazy.
Just twigs all over our driveway and street compared
to the area just south and east of us.
Our backyard:
I'm glad we weren't home.
So, we determine there's no saving the brand new carpet the sellers installed just before we moved in. The flooded area was way too extensive to attempt to dry it out.
No more carpet in the basement. I don't care if there's not a drop down there for 10 years, I'm not going through this mess again.
Here are the wet basement pictures. I'm not sure how much you can tell.
(Ughh, this man needs a proper shop. I'm sorry Hunny. If we can get a week straight without anything major happening...)
Footprints in the sopping wet carpet
NO! A small spot from the front of the house
Keep pulling it back...
Sucking up as much as possible with the wet vac
He bought a bigger one the next day. Of course, we haven't needed it.
That pile is at least doubled now and soaking wet from the many wet days since. Our area is at nearly 21" rainfall since May 1st, which is over 12" more than average.
My husband spent a good chunk of this past holiday weekend regrading another corner of the house.
So exciting, right?
The really infuriating thing is that we were told there were zero water issues. What a big fat lie.
I really want to believe that the last owners weren't trying to pull the wool over our eyes and it really hadn't been leaking through all the dryer years we had previously had.
But I have a really hard time believing that over this house's 27 year history, with all the poor grading, guttering and fill issues we discovered, we are the very first to have the basement flood.
Well, what'd'ya do? I don't know that I have the time, energy or desire to drag someone into court to try to prove the nearly impossible: that they knew and fraudulently didn't disclose it. I feel duped, but I don't know that I'm the suing kind.
We're desperately hoping Josh dug up the root of the issue (ba dum chhh) when we discovered that the original window well had settled down so far that another one had simply been placed on top of it, neither of which were at an adequate height to grade the soil away from the house. Who knows how much water was getting around and between the stacked and severely rusted out wells.
Number 2
Number 1 still buried (note how it barely even reaches the bottom of the window= holy settlement!)
All the rock from inside the window well with so much clay/dirt in it that who knows if the water was even making it to the drain or, more likely, just flooding in through the window
Well #1 after much cutting and digging to finally get it out
A new 24" tall window well that exceeds the 8" minimum above the window ledge, fill gravel cleaned and replaced and soil sloping away from the foundation
I'm exhausted just typing it all out and I didn't hardly do any of the work.
We're looking into options for the basement, including acid staining the concrete. That would require getting all the glue off and skim coating first, but I think we could do it. Another project to add to the ever-growing list.
Now back to the pretty stuff!
p.s. I'm proud to report that during a week of primarily rainy days and flash flood warnings, the basement has remained dry since Josh's fixes. I am PRAYING that we are DONE with the water!
p.p.s. Josh's nerdy geotech plans include reworking the guttering, running it into drains to the street and running a french drain through the backyard to address our swamp land. And possibly installing a 2nd sump pump in this corner too.
p.p.p.s. I love said "nerdiness."
