The Best Laid Plans Of Mice And Men - A Woeful Tale of Homeownership

A little back story… I bought my house in May of 2010 and got the New Home buyer Tax Credit (kaching!). The credit requires you reside in your house for three years. Matt and I were “just dating” when I bought my house so I bought a single girl house and not a married family house, it is too small! We planned to sell pretty quickly once the three years were up so the plan was to list it early in 2013 with the hope that it would sell by May. That is the thing about plans though… life always wins! The house across the street from us is for sale and has been for almost a year. It is a real dump fixer-upper and the price continues to drop which is not exactly an awesome thing when you want to sell your house that is updated and in relatively good condition (as much as you can expect from a house that is almost 100 years old). So that meant as 2013 rolled around we had to decide on a Plan B.

We decided that if we were going to be sticking around a bit longer we needed more space and  a basement remodel was just the ticket. Plan B consisted of three phases (I am an engineer dontchaknow). Our house is a perfect rectangle so the basement is a rectangle minus the garage ergo, an L. Phase 1 consisted of adding custom storage to the bottom part of the L and making that back part more functional for laundry and Matt’s brewing.
 

not to scale

For Phase 1a we added a sink which went perfectly until a week later when I went to do laundry and my washer wouldn't work… Someone forgot to turn the hot water valve back on so easy fix, nbd! Phase 1b and 1c included two weekends of installing the shelving. I was project manager (I am AWESOME at bossing people around!) and my dad was the instructor which left Matt to the heavy lifting. He learned how to frame and install custom shelves which is always a good skill to have! I wanted to learn but putting my father (also an engineer) and me together for too long on a project like this doesn't really end well for anyone.

So Phase 1 was complete! Phase 2 was installing more shelving in the garage and Phase 3 was refinishing the front part of the L into a usable space including a custom bar with a tap to Matt’s kegerator so Matt could serve his home brew in style!

only in my dreams...

apparently it wasn't meant to be

In order to do Phase 2 the garage needed to be cleaned out which meant we needed a nice, dry, warmish weekend and MO weather has been so weird all year! Needless to say this put a bit of a break into our schedule. In the meantime we went to Chicago for Easter with Matt’s parents. It was nice, lots of food was consumed and good times were had by all. Sunday after mass and a big family Easter dinner we drive the 6+ hours home. Apparently it had been pouring in STL the whole weekend and after being in the car for what felt like a bazillion hours we got home only to find our basement is flooded… omg awesome!

I had always suspected we might have a little flooding because sometimes the floor looked like it had been wet but recently dried, but I had never found evidence… until now! This was a crazy weekend of rain so I we thought maybe it was one of those freak once every three year things… and then it happened again a few weeks later, and again, and again. So now we are on hold with Phase 2 and at this time totally scratching Phase 3 which is super sad.

so sad

Now we need a Plan C, any ideas?


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