Regaining Our Home

The title of this post, "Regaining Our Home," is over-dramatic.  We didn't lose it.  And comparatively speaking, what we had was still loads better than what many have.  But, regardless, this past week it has felt like we've gotten our home back.  Let me explain...

Back in June, northern Indiana had a lot of rain.  Actually, I need to go back further than that.  About 6 months after we bought our house, in the fall of 2007, we noticed that our crawl space and the corner of the carpet extending from the crawl space into our big family room in our lower level (lowest level of a tri-level house) was damp.  While concerned, we noticed that the down spout in the front of the house was not attached to the gutter coming down from the roof, and figured it was simply because the water was going straight down.

Over the years, we had similar issues with dampness down there, but always tied it the down spout getting blown off during a storm, or just a particularly heavy rain, as the down spout just kicked the water about 6 feet in front of the house, and the land sloped every so slightly back towards the house.  Eventually, I got several down spouts and ran them along the front of our house so that it would redirect any rainfall gathered from the roof to the west side of our property, where it would follow a natural slope away from our house.  Last year, this seemed to work as we never had any dampness downstairs in the early part of the year, and then didn't have to worry about it as our area went through a small drought where there was practically no rain for several months.

So, bringing us back to June of this year, we had a lot of rain.  We came back from being out of town, walked in from our garage, and could immediately smell mildew coming from downstairs.  When we walked downstairs, the carpet was damp a good 10-12 feet from the corner of the crawl space, and had that wonderful "squishy" sound when walking on it.  We moved some furniture that was close to the damp carpet, and got some fans to blow on the wet areas, like we had in the past.  The following week, we continued to get more and more rain, to the point that when we walked on the downstairs carpet coming out from the wall, water would seep out.  We decided, considering we had past issues, that this was our family room where we would spend much of our time relaxing with each other and with Maia, and that we were hoping to move a Bar to the area most affected, we should have the house examined to see what was causing the issue.

Turns out we had pretty significant issues.  There were several areas in the foundation that had cracks.  The house, which had no sump pump (which we knew), did not have a drain tile (which we didn't know).  Most of the soil around the house is clay, so water would just sit and not be absorbed (which explains so many of my issues with trying to mow over the years).  Our house sits in the downward slope of the natural flow of water through our neighborhood.  So, all this water was being directed towards our house, and the house had foundation cracks and nothing in place to direct water away from the house.  Not a good recipe for us, but a great recipe for mold, which was very evident in parts of our crawlspace (which is where our vents for our furnace and air-conditioner draw their air from).  Obviously, this was not great news, and something had to be done.

So we hired a company to dig around both the outside and inside of the foundation, seal any cracks, waterproof it, put in a drain tile, and put in a sump pump.  We also had them install a "breathing system" in our downstairs to control the humidity in order to dry things out so as to effectively kill the mold (kind of like a dehumidifier, except it vents to the outside of the house).  Needless to say, this was not cheap.  It also meant that all the carpet and flooring downstairs would have to be replaced, as it would be partially removed from the trenching to do the drain tile, sump pump, and waterproofing work.  Undertaking such a project, financially, meant putting off various things we hoped for, like possibly my first true vacation in almost 6 years.  But we could figure out how to afford to get it done, which means we were (are) still very fortunate.

The weekend after the house was inspected and the problem was diagnosed, we got even more rain, and this time, we actually had standing water in our downstairs.  Jackie and I quickly started moving furniture up, at 11:30 on a Saturday night, so none of it would be damaged.  Thus, from July 1st, to about a week ago, our downstairs was out of commission.

The removed blue carpet is approximately the reach
of the standing water we had.

Moldy carpet and rug; tile coming up due to carpet being
glued to it.

But eventually, we got there.  In the months between the beginning of July and mid-September, when the waterproofing work was done, we picked out carpet and new flooring to go downstairs (family room and office have carpet, laundry room had linoleum).  I worked to the best of my ability to pull up the carpet, so we could get the moldy carpet out of the house (made much more difficult by the prior owners' decision to glue the carpet to the tile underneath).

Inside trenching complete, working on painting.

More trenching in the big family room.

In mid-September, in 3 days, all the waterproofing work was done, and we were closer to having the downstairs back.  The new work got tested right away, as the first night after the work was completed, we had three inches of rain.  But everything stayed dry.  The following month was spent putting new paint on the walls, getting new trim put up around the flooring, to be in place for when then new carpet and flooring would be installed.

Then, in mid-October, we had the carpet and flooring installed.  That only took a couple days, and then after that, Jackie and I immediately started moving furniture back downstairs.  The sectional and sofa table left our dining room to come back downstairs, allowing us to actually have a functioning dining room.  We moved all the entertainment center pieces from one of the upstairs bedroom back to their places.  We moved other furniture pieces from the garage back to their rightful places.

The new carpet!

New in the office room as well.

Wood looking linoleum in laundry room, adding some
much needed color/warmth.

The house was coming back together for us.  After spending several months in more limited space than what we were accustomed to, with an adventurous and wanting to explore infant, a sense of normalcy was returning.  Instead of being "confined" to our small upstairs living room off the kitchen, which is probably about 120 square feet, we returned to our large family room downstairs, which is over 300 square feet.  We always tried to stay conscious of the fact that even in those months where we had to adjust for the water damage and less usable space, we had much more than many people have.  But, I won't lie, it felt very good to feel like we had our entire house back and usable.

The entertainment center back in its rightful spot.

Looking towards the stairs.

Looking from the stairs into the family room.

We still have to adjust the bottom of some doors due to the height of the new carpet, and move that Bar in downstairs that we initially talked about doing several months ago, but we have our relaxing space and full house back and usable.  Its not overstating it to say that the house feels like home again.