Life Lately

Warning: This may contain the ugliest pictures I have ever posted.  Don’t look for prettiness here today.

So where have I been?  I am feeling human again and therefore have no excuse for being such a blog slacker.  Well let’s just say mother nature and the anything pretty house have not been friends lately. 

It all started with us  making progress on the nursery and I was having all kinds of fun painting built ins and trim.  I was so excited to share the progress.  But then I pulled the tape and the fresh ceiling paint and primer came off in chunks.  We had bare drywall.

How could that be?  I love my primer and paint and this has never happened before.  Wait a second….does the drywall feel wet?  No it just must feel cold.

Let’s look in the attic and move some insulation.

Yep definitely wet.

And is and more wetness paired with black stuff which appears to be mold or some other sort of nastiness.

Well let’s get a roofer here and clean it up and repaint the stupid ceiling after it dries out.

So we dried and scraped and repainted.  And had tons of fun fixing it.

And then Derek walked into the basement last week and splashed when he stepped on the carpet.

Hmmm everywhere you step, there is water splashing up.

Not good.

Our sump pump decided that it had had enough and stopped working.  Funny how a back up pump is not something you ever think about until you have a couple inches of dirty rainwater in your basement.

So all the carpet had to be ripped out.  And all the laminate.  And all the ugly peel and stick tile in the bathroom. And giant fans and dehudifiers joined the party.. 

And since water seeped into the drywall as well….

….baseboards came off and holes were drilled to air it all out.

Great fun.

So that is my posting has been a little off. 

Looking on the bright side, it could have been a whole lot worse.  It could have been sewage.  It could have ruined furniture or electronics or everything in the storage area which was luckily off the ground.  We could have not gone into the basement for days and had many times more water and damage to drywall.  We had insurance with sump pump coverage.  The carpet was old and I did not shed a tear when they hauled that out.  The laminate that we spent a weekend putting down was another story….but this is the bright side.

So the good news is that the basement has been moved up on the remodel list.  We had talked about it before but decided the money we needed to invest to make it the way we wanted it was not there right now for a space we rarely used.  And now the insurance company gets to help with part of that.

The bad news?  A huge remodel was not on the ole timeline right now.  And while the insurance is much appreciated for the floors and walls, the furniture, decor and big screen to make it an entertainment area will still be on us. 

So if you were worried that the nursery was going to be the only project going on, you can rest easy thanks to mother nature.  Now I just need to figure how the heck to make the basement be a “man’ space while the same time housing all the future toys.  And cheap too.  Should be interesting….