Real Life is Hard

It would be so nice just to work on the house, but my real job interferes with that. Don't get me wrong I love my real job, (most of the time.) But man, I really want to stain that wainscoting. Plus throw in a three year old with a sensory disorder and you have mayhem!
So as you may or may not have guessed, the basement is going rather slow. We do have that icky flood smell gone. That was nasty! We have the walls coated, and mostly insulated. We have 3/4 of the wainscoting up.
My dear stepson came this weekend. He turns 15 tomorrow. So we set up his bed in his partially finished room. The poor kid is kinda sick of sleeping in the living room. I think "camp-outs" get old after age 7. So that also means about 6-8 15 year olds in his room all weekend long....so no more working on the basement this weekend.
Hmmmmmm..... Maybe I can transplant the peonies..............

As the winds blow colder...

And the nights grow longer, me thinks we really need new windows. Now I know this open up a whole other debate about original verses replacement windows, however, we do not have the original windows in our house. Ours are crappy Sears replacement windows from 1970 something, so we need new ones. Now with 26 windows that need replacing, that is quite the budget buster, if we had one. Before this winter I had hoped to have the exterior lead paint stripped off all the windows and the three windows in my dtr's room replaced and our two windows replaced. Even with the storm windows on you can see through a crack right outside. This can be quite drafty during January around 2am or so. But then we had water damage to our basement. So there went our window budget. But now I'm thinking we just need to find a way to get those windows.
I have not figured out a way to get to my daughter's windows with falling off of the little roof on the porch. (Speaking of that room, can anyone tell me an easy way to cool it off in the summer and have it retain heat in the winter? It is well insulated, except for the lovely exterior wall, but all our rooms have that issue, so I don't know why that room is such a problem. What am I missing?)
Anyway, windows, basement and bathroom. Hmmmm not a lot to do...right tell it to dear hubby. :-)

Steppin Out

Well today was the walk for Gundersen Lutheran Steppin Out In Pink. What a beautiful day we had! The sun was shining and we had so many people we were running out of things! I manned the information tent with my boss for most of the day. I had so much fun and I think most of the walkers did too! It was truly amazing to see all those people! Truly amazing and truly humbling.

Progress!

Well we got a dumpster, that is a lot to be said in this area right now! So we got the drywall out, the carpeting, and all the non savable stuff, which was quite a bit. My dear stepson got hit the worst. He lost a lot of his boyhood possessions, (being he is a teenager you know!) his collectible Pokemon cards, clothes, DVD player, Gameboy, we lost a lot of bedding stuff and other stuff we had stored down there. So 4 dumpster fulls later, (it was a small dumpster) and one more to go, we have most of it gone. We have used a watertight mildew and mold resistant paint on all the cement walls. We really couldn't find a "crack" in the foundation, but where the water was pouring in at was the chimney area. I think that old brick just wicked that water right in. So we probably will have to do something there. Whether we paint it with that paint, or what I have no idea. Then we need to re-insulate, re-frame, hang the drywall and stuff and get going. That will probably take us until Christmas! LOL

Suck it up

Okay the past couple of posts I've been whining about the basement. Now it's time to suck it up and move on. This house has been one thing after another after another. Then with the seeping basement walls and floor it seemed like that was it. It was just too much for me to handle. We lost my stepson's room, all the carpet, half of what he owned, all the drywall and a lot of other stuff. But it's just that stuff. It took 5 days or so of me whining and being just overwhelmed with the nasty flood smell to get over it.
Today we went through another little Hicksville town to get to my son's daycare. His daycare has been closed because it had over an inch of mud in it. They had to sanitize and clean and rip out drywall and stuff. We saw people who have a right to whine. They are living in tents, in RVs, in their backyards, or their homes have just been condemned. I saw old bungalows that can never be restored. I felt I could not take pictures of such tragedy, it was just too personal. I have no right to whine. No right. No excuse my past few posts. It was just me re-prioritizing the to-do list on my old money pit here.
Here are some pictures run in the local news. This one was a park my kids play at.

We are so...

We have had the most rainfall in history of Hicksville. And we are SOL. I give up. Dear hubby hasn't yet, but I give up. We simply cannot keep up. Our lovely old brick is seeping the water in and we just cannot keep up. (Governor Doyle has declared a state of emergency, but there are people that are much worse off than we are, so that is where the help needs to go now.) It is just so bad. So so bad down there. My stepson's room is just not pretty and the chimney area where the brick is, that is where it is seeping in at, well that is just, you could really sit there all night with the shop vac. You'd keep up, but still. I'm to the point I'm almost crying, I'm just so overwhelmed.
Okay I'm done venting, off to the basement to vacuum up some more water!

Well then

Dear hubby is starting to slowly hate the house. Between the exterior windows, a newly found hole in an overhang roof, and a new problem I think he's reached his breaking point. In his former life he used do stuff in construction. Then he got a job at the prison where he works now. I really don't think buying an older home this time around was in his "big picture." But here we are.

It's been raining a lot here. A LOT. About 15 inches or so. Our basement sprung a leak. I really just think the concrete absorbed the water and it is just seeping in. It's not pretty down there. There's not a lot of water, but it just keeps coming. It's supposed to rain until Thursday here. We're screwed.