Flood, Fire & Locusts, Part Two

Get a soda, a snack, dessert, a pillow for a short nap…you may find you need all those items to get through Part Two.

I did.

It was time consuming to get the pictures together but the flood and fire story just isn’t complete without them.

Or maybe this just serves as the unfinished scrapbook pages for our family album that I never got around to and the kids can print this post. Oh good, I’m feeling productive now.

We had several basement water companies come out and give estimates on systems that would require them to break the concrete floor around the foundation of the house and install pipes to funnel the water outside.

This stressed PhilBillPaul as his logical mind insisted that letting the water come into the house and then draining it back out was not an acceptable solution.

I try hard not to participate in these home project decisions. I’m not qualified. Mostly because it doesn’t matter what I say, PhilBillPaul always does the opposite.

I moved on and pretended the water would never come back if it never rained hard in Georgia again. Because sometimes living in the Land of Denial is the safest place to live.

We re-painted the pink and purple basement that flooded twice and turned it into a workshop space for my homebased business.

We always enlist the manual labor force who live at our house.

FYI – six and seven year-old children can paint the lower walls.

As long as you’re not too picky about the quality of their work.

Luckily, I’m not. Because I hate to paint.

The workshop area was very functional and I used it two days a month and then it reverted back to a play room for the kids.

Then it rained really hard again in Georgia on two more separate occasions. Which meant two more “episodes” with wet carpet, shop vac water removal and carpet cleaning. I stayed upstairs.

We had a few dry years. Very exciting times.

But in 2006, a huge storm blew through and I smelled the wet carpet and mold from upstairs. I was not happy. I took matters into my own hands. I think I had been very patient for approximately 12 years with a basement flood occurring every 3 years or so.

A wonderful “good ‘ole boy” from a basement water company came and did an inspection and invited me outside to show me why the basement kept flooding. He said he could sell me a basement drainage system for several thousand dollars but he’d rather show me the real cause which had nothing to do with our foundation.

Excellent. I love an honest business man. So he pointed up to the chimney and said he could guarantee that the flashing around the chimney had never been installed properly and the water was running straight down the house and seeping into the basement.

Improper gutter installation and drainage were the culprits all these years and now we could add rotted siding to our list of home repairs.

But at least it felt like we were making progress! Let’s get this fixed. I hired people for the high ladder work because even though Mr. Handy loves to fix everything himself, he is afraid of heights which worked to my advantage. While others are envious of PhilBillPaul’s handyman skills, I actually would prefer to hire someone for many household jobs It causes a little ton of marital strife.

Somewhere in the midst of all this, we decided to go crazy and update the basement one last time to create an inviting environment for our teenagers. We want to be the house that we welcome their friends to and they will hang out here because we’re fun parents like that.

Okay, that ‘s not true–we just want to keep an eye on everyone and know what they’re doing and make unannounced visits to the basement at random times.

So we researched and planned a new look for the basement with our number one priority to get that disgusting carpet out of our house and replace it with some other kind of flooring.

If you don’t already know this, options in floor covering with concrete are limited. And I couldn’t help but think, “What if it floods again?” I refused to put carpet anywhere in my house ever.

As the work began, PhilBillPaul uncovered a moldy wall in the guest bedroom that had been hidden by a piece of furniture.

I FREAKED OUT.

I ranted. I screamed. I cried. I just knew it. Our house was full of mold. It’s why I have migraines. It’s why anybody ever got a cold. It’s why I can’t sleep. The mold was going to send me to The Black Hole before I even knew I was going there.

WE MUST GET THE MOLD OUT OF OUR HOUSE.

So the Basement Renovation of the summer of 2006 began…

Thankfully, the manual labor force was older and stronger so I became the General Contractor and supervised the work crew. Because I am an excellent supervisor.

Unfortunately, Mr. Handy discovered that the mold extended all the way across the entire concrete block wall and was not contained in a small area in the guest room.

Did I mention that PhilBillPaul HATES to do drywall work? Oh yeah, this was going to be a long, hot summer…

As you can see it’s hard to summarize 15 years of flood and subsequent fire into a short post.

Friday I promise I’ll finish the fire story and show you what our basement looks like now. And finally answer why I took Xanax two weeks ago on Thursday.

For goodness sake, it has taken me way too long to get to the point but I hope you understand why…

To be continued…

Flood, Fire & Locusts, Part Three