The Money Pit, Part the Next

 It's been about 2 years since the last major house issue, so you know it's gotta be time for the next thing.  I can see you now, sitting there and wondering "what broke down now?" It's not that something broke.  It's that something failed.

To catch you up - we bought this house from my in-laws.  The house itself is 57 years old. They owned it for the first 35 years. Cool, right?  Well it would be if they had ever once, in the 35 years they lived in that house engaged in any form of home maintenance whatsoever.  I assumed that they had.  I mean, I grew up with parents who were constantly upgrading and fixing issues around the house. They never let issues fester in a home that they owned.  I assumed that everyone else did the same.  But, you know what they say about assumptions.  The last 22 years have been filled with misadventures as we have triaged problems and then attempted to fix long standing issues that have mushroomed into more because they weren't dealt with when they first appeared.

The latest problem is water in the basement.  A lot of water in the basement.  It's coming up under the floor in the basement, around the seams in the wall, and under the basement door.  We don't have a sump pump.  My in-laws left us with the parts for a sump pump, in a box.  I remember unpacking that box.  The parts were from something that my FIL dismantled in the 60's.  It had clearly been used before.

So.... water in the basement.  It's been a problem over the past 20 years.  Some  years are better than others, but this has been a very wet year.  It is no longer something we can ignore.  So, we are going to have someone come in and waterproof the basement.  

Step one is moving everything in the basement at least 5 feet away from the walls. Over the past month, I have been moving everything away from the walls.  This has necessitated me going through boxes, sifting through stuff I haven't sifted through before, and getting rid of the stuff we no longer need.  

As of this weekend, step one is now completed.  The permit has been approved and we have scheduled step two.

I really, really hope that this is the last of the legacy problems with the house.