Wednesday...playin' hookie

I'm taking a day off work. It's a personal day with no pay. I'm going to get some work done on my car this morning and while we're in town today, with some time to kill, we're going to try to go see Beverly Hills Chihuahua. We are also going to be near Lowe's, so we'll run in there and see about some room-sized rugs for our basement redecorating project. After getting 3" of water in our basement in a bad rain storm this past spring, we decided to paint and redecorate the basement family room area. We recently rented a dumpster and got rid of loads of stuff that was being stored down there, some of which was ruined by water damage. I'm such a pack rat and having open space to me is an invitation to store things. Lots and lots of things. But now I'm taking back the space and getting it ready to make my exercise room usable again, and also have a neat place to do crafts and artwork or for Andy to do his puzzles. He likes doing them in the winter when there's nothing much else to do. We're also going to make a bedroom area in the space that will be sectioned off by movable room divider screens or maybe curtains, we're not sure yet.

Anyway, after making sure we had all the things we are keeping in plastic totes...cardboard boxes sure don't work... and clearing out a huge section of basement we had to devise a plan in case we ever get water in the basement again. We considered all types of flooring but settled on the most practical....painting the cement floor and getting room sized rugs that can be taken up and dealt with in the event of water in the basement again.

Getting water in the basement has only happened twice since I've owned this house for over 37 years, but you just never know! BTW, the water wasn't due to any glitch in the house, just from downspouts being inadvertently left off when we were mowing the lawn and then a huge deluge coming soon after. It went like this... Move downspout extensions so we can mow the lawn -> Downspouts left off and forgotten in the rush to get done and in the house before the rain hits -> Huge storm comes...6" of rain in 4 hours this time -> Water from the roof runs down along foundation -> Water fills drainage fields around house -> Water comes into sump hole -> Power off from storm -> Electric sump pump fails to take drainage water out of sump hole -> Basement fills with runoff water -> Mess to clean up! HUGE ugly mess!!!

Therefore, rather than take a chance again we decided against wall-to-wall carpet, tile or even linoleum in favor of painted floors that can easily be cleaned and large rugs that can be taken outdoors, hosed off and dried in the event of this happening again.