This holiday season was filled with fun and sadness, and between the two, and the house, I am worn out. However, we have started to turn a corner. It had seemed like everything that had happened until now was progressively making my life worse and worse. Everything was dirty all of the time, the dust had spiraled completely out of control. We lost electricity in half of the house, there was no shower, the only toilet was in the stinky make-shirt bathroom in the basement. To top it all off, it was cold. Really, really, cold. all of the insulation had been removed from the back of the house in re-doing the sunroom, and it was making winter in Chicago pretty unbearable.
So we retreated to my mom’s for a month, but now we’re back. The cabinets in the kitchen and bathroom are in, the floors look awsome, and there is consistent electricity, including overhead lighting in the living room (a rarity in Oak Park), and now, we finally have the refrigerator actually in the kitchen.
This past weekend was spent on a few miscellaneous projects. We got the the window trim all put back up, in the dining room and main bedroom and it looks great. The new continuous window sil blends in beautifully with the rest of the original trim. Matt and Thor also got the refridgerator put into it’s built-in cabinet. And it works, too. Probably the biggest task was getting the giant bathroom linen closet cabinet in. A good 2 hours was spent with Thor and Matt locked in the bathroom as they tried to lift the cabinet in and maneuver it into place with about a 2 in area of wiggle room. They got it in, and trimmed out. We just need to finish drywalling in the top area around it. Meanwhile I worked on stripping the door to the basement in hopes that putting that back up will help keep the house warm. We will get there.
Tags: basement, bathroom, cabinets, cold, dirty, floors, kitchen, stripping, sunroom, trim, winter
It started raining Friday, around when the cable guy showed up and just never stopped. We ended up bribing the cable man with a 6 pack of beer to climb up onto the wet roof and install the dish (they are supposed to wait until it’s dry out.) It was either there, or on top of the garage, with a cable running over the yard to the house (ugh). I think if the world starts ending, alcohol could easily become the new currency. It is definitely becoming a luxury item in our house, and we have had positive results with the trash man as well ever since we gave him a 6 pack after he refused to take our trash away two weeks ago.
Anyway, the rain just continued and went on and on. Sunday morning, we woke up, with things starting as usual–vegging on the couch watching CBS Sunday Morning and eating breakfast. Then Thor wandered down to the basement and ruined our peaceful morning.
Two-thirds of basement was flooded. In some places there was an inch of standing water. The water was seeping in through the walls on all sides. After the continual oppressive rain of the past three days, I guess our basement never stood a chance. What a way to discover the basement is not water-proofed at all. We then spent an hour trying to salvage all of our tools and boxes of sopping wet wedding presents which we have yet to open since we’ve had no place for them until now, and pull all of the wood trim out of the water so it doesn’t get warped.
We didn’t have to pump the basement out, all of the water just seeped back into the floor. I’m not sure whether this is a good thing or not. On the one hand, we didn’t have to really clean the water out of the basement. On the other hand, it just continues to enforce the porous nature of this space.
All in all, we are grateful, though. There were a lot of people who suffered a lot worse this weekend. My grandfather who lives in Galveston has probably lost his home (we won’t know for a few more weeks yet), and it will probably be 3 more weeks until my aunt and uncle who live in Houston have power again. So a little water in the basement we can deal with
