rainy sunday

Yesterday we had torrential downpours all day long. It was crazy.

We have had problems with water in the basement before but this time was the worst, usually we get a little puddle of water in a corner that dries up in no time. Big contribution to our water problem is that the concrete slab in the basement is sloped away from the pump and in the concrete in the backyard is sloped towards the house. Who would plan something like this? *%@$#!

I took the Sunday picture in the afternoon but by late evening it was even worse but since I was frantically trying to push water towards the sump pump with a broom I totally forgot to take a picture. To cheer me up while working to save the basement from drowning in water I wore my yellow wellies ;)

We are going to work on the back yard next spring and having proper drainage that leads the water away from the house is one item on the list. Hopefully after that we don't have to deal with floods in the basement anymore.

Today you can already see a little dry spot by the mop sink. The dehumidifier is running 24/7 and the basement should be dry again soon.

basement clean-up

Instead of painting the front door memorial day weekend we started to clean-up and organize the basement. It was basically just a dumping ground for paint cans and all kinds of stuff that we didn't want upstairs. A major plus working in the basement that weekend was that is was cool down there while the rest of the house got pretty hot.

We already picked up some shelves and bins a while back at Ikea in an earlier attempt to start organizing all our stuff downstairs.

It is still not a 100% done but it looks already much better. Now we are able to find all of our paint cans, rollers, brushes etc.

We still need to disassemble the old washer and dryer to be able to move them out of the basement. They are too big to fit up the stairs. How they got them down the stairs is an unsolved mystery. There's no space for the Billy shelf that is lying on top of the washer/dryer upstairs. Want to post an ad on craigslist to find someone who will pick it up for free.

before




after

it's miller time

Finally some progress on my February to-do list

- finish fireplace - almost there, cast iron fireplace door is spray painted, still needs to be put in place
- cover panel for island and finish painting trim in kitchen - done!
- prepare the hallway to get painted - first floor hallway is done, we even painted the baseboards and most of the doorframes already, second floor hallway, most baseboards have been caulked
- assemble bekväm step stool and decided what color to paint or stain it - decision on color has been made

I addition to above mentioned items I also cleared the area around the workbench in the basement in order to be able to actually work on it. The beer stickers I already noticed a while back because they are prominently displayed above the work area. While sweeping under the workbench I found numerous hooks for fishing, doe urine (yuck) and a bullet. It's like being on one of those crime shows where I get to puzzle all the clues together who lived in this house before us...

no more laundromat!

I totally forgot to give an update on our laundry situation since my last post about our washer/dryer in September. In October we had an electrician come out and add a 240 Volt Outlet to the basement. So finally we don't have to schlepp our laundry to the laundromat!

After we had a little bit of flooding in the basement and had to prop up the washer and dryer up on bricks we decided to buy stands for them. Phew those stands are expensive but now the appliances have a much better height to load and unload them.

In case anybody wonders why there are tennis balls on our dryer I used two of them for drying our down pillows, they really make them fluffy again.

flood

It's fall again, it started two weeks ago with heavy rains which let to a little flood in our basement because our sump pump was broken. It was actually worse in the morning. I took the pictures after work when I brought home the new pump and a lot of water already disappeared. We have propped up the washer and dryer on bricks to keep them dry. Of course this is not a permanent solution, more on that later...Look how clean and shiny the new pump looks compared to the old one, which looks kind of yucky.

Put the pump in by myself so I deserve a pat on my shoulder ;)

no more laundromat?

Well we are not quite there yet...

We bought a new washing machine and a dryer a couple of weeks ago. Since we had only limited space to get anything down the cellar stairs we needed 24" wide models. The stair is only 25" wide, which left us just an inch of wiggle room. Funny thing I found out on the hunt for the perfect washer/dryer is that the smaller the appliance the more it seems to cost...

The Bosch models need a 240 Volt Outlet to be plugged into and we still haven't even called an electrician to install one for us. Both of us don't really like to schlepp our stuff to the laundromat. That's what I call procrastination at its worst...

There were two washing machines and one dryer (or was it two dryer and a washing machine?) in the basement but none was working. One machine was small enough to be carried up the stairs and was taken away by the people who delivered the new ones, two were not. They are still sitting in the basement waiting to be taken apart.

The big mystery here is how did the appliances get down into the basement in the first place? Guess we'll never find out...