the flood

we had so much rain this spring. the night of march 19th was so bad. we woke up, left to run some errands, and then got a text from jack.

"the basement is flooded"

"you serious?? how much water?"

"like, a lot"

the entire basement (apx 1400 sq ft) had 3 ½ inches of water.

so our renovations of our kitchen/dining/living area have been put on hold while we take care of the basement, a project we were saving for a few years down the road.

turns out, many homes in the township and village of Granville flooded.

our neighbor, who has lived here since the early 80's said he's never seen it flood this badly. lucky us!

we still aren't entirely sure how the water actually got in the basement because we didn't have flood waters come up to the house. the ground must have been so saturated that it just came through the cinderblock walls and the floors.

a portion of the basement was somewhat finished. we had been using the entire basement as storage space at the time of the flood.

the kids were troopers and helped us sort, haul, disinfect, and everything else involved with flood clean up. it really wasn't too bad. at least it wasn't salt water or hot and humid out, like we've dealt with for hurricane flooding.

we tore up the carpet in the finished area and then scraped the adhesive off the floors. jeesh, what a job!

one cool discovery was a shuffleboard that the original owners had painted on the floor!

chris tore down the drop ceiling

and our neighbor, Mark, helped chris install can lights all throughout the basement. its such a HUGE improvement to such a low-ceilinged space!

and then he painted multiple coats of white paint on the ceilings and walls to help it feel brighter and more open.

chris has worked so hard on this basement! so grateful that he's willing to put in the hours and the sweat, its really been a huge transformation!

we paid some mega bucks for a basement company to come put in a waterproofing system, which includes two sump pumps. the job was huge and took several guys a whole week of drilling trenches around the perimeter of the concrete and hauling it all out. then adding the pipe and sump pumps system. every night when chris got home from work he would check out what had been done and every evening there was something not quite right. usually, they didn't do something they said they were going to. chris specifically chose this company over the multiple other companies we had come out and look at the job because of some techniques they said they used... but as the job progressed we realized they were doing the job the same way the other companies said they would, not the way they told us originally. by Thursday of that week, the guys had to undo everything they had done and start over. it was a mess! but the job is hopefully done more correctly at this point (although we have some suspicions that they cut corners here and there and wouldn't be surprised if we get water again. good thing they have a lifetime guarantee!)

the concrete takes 6 weeks to cure, at which point we will most likely paint the floors with an epoxy and call it good. this was a major hit to our renovation budget, but we are glad to have more space that we can utilize for playing and hanging out. we've already put a ping pong table down there which has already provided hours of fun for the kids and us adults too!