CAPS Lock on the letter B

B is for BUMMER!


The past few days we have been getting quite the amount of rain. (Yay spring is here!!) But we are just a tad bit worried because we just finished our basement (nice carpet and all) and we don't want it to flood. 


If you were unaware.... when we bought our home the basement drywall, from the waist down, was ripped out because the basement had flooded. It flooded because the bank turned the electricity off so the sump pump wasn't able to turn on. Smart right? Well moving forward, we purchased the home and then one day... or two.... or three days, the basement flooded. The sump pump was on and working but we had a leak around the tubing that carries the house waste to the outside. No one sealed the opening around the tube. You could literally look straight out from our basement and see the ground outside. Awesome. Well my amazing hubby fixed that right up. We waited for rain, and then snow... and the leak was no longer a leak, so we were confident there would be no more flooding. 


WRONG!


So we finished our basement (besides the small details). Everything is going great. It rained, we held our breath, and sighed as the basement was still dry. Wah hoO! 
But boy-o-boy was I prepared with buckets by my side just in case! 


It started to rain again a few days ago, and my dad spotted a HUGE puddle on the ledge underneath the window. (Where the bucket is placed in the photo below.)

We (and when I say we, I really mean Steve at this point) cut away the caulk and a little bit of drywall from the window and tried to see the problem.  We went outside and duct taped the outside of the window. (Time out! I know what you are thinking....duct tape on the outside of your window?  PRETTY!  Note to self: duct tape can fix ANYTHING! But lets be honest here...the duct tape was only temporary while the rain was pouring down).  So using the duct tape on the outside totally helped stop the flow of water pouring in. Now I ask myself... why did this leak not happen while we were putting up new drywall and knocking old stuff down? Hmmm.... the world may never know. 


Here is the cut away.... but nothing seemed too crazy or explainable. So now we wait.

We sealed the outside of the window yesterday since all the wetness was dried up thanks to the spring sun, and now we wait again. It rained all last night and there seemed to be no water leakage. So the sealing outside worked?? I don't know... my heart is still kind of nervous about the 'what if'.  I think we might just have to tear down the drywall above the widow to be sure. 


Sigh, and I thought the basement was almost complete. Ha-ha.  However, times like this I am glad I work from the home so I can keep checking on it during the day.  Which... reminds me.... we should invest in a back-up sump pump pronto! 


xox m.