The rains came down...

We have been a little busy here at the Baker house the last week and a half. After getting home late from visiting my family on Sunday, February 27th, I went downstairs about 11PM to toss a load of clothes in the washer. I thought I'd be smart and get a head start on Monday's housework. Turns out, we had a LOT of "housework" to do the following week. And it did NOT include a piece of laundry until Wednesday - when the washer and dryer were dried out.

The water had just begun to creep in when I went downstairs, so we were able to get everything up off the floor that could have been ruined by the water. We are still wondering why our house wasn't built with a sump pump...

Jonathan went downstairs a couple times during the night to check on things. I told him there was nothing that could be done, so why keep getting up. But that probably had something to do with the protector male instinct or something.

 By 6AM we had 6 inches of water through the whole basement. About 7AM he called a man from our church who lives a couple miles from us. He always seems to have just the right tool for getting out of a jam, and he kindly brought us a sump pump and hose long enough to put way out to the driveway.

By lunch time the water was gone. But the MUD remained. And so we began the work of using the pressure washer and squeegee throughout the entire basement. That is the blessing that came disguised as flood waters - we now have a VERY clean basement!

Knowing that it was supposed to rain just as hard the following weekend spurred us on to breaking up concrete and installing a sump pit. Jonathan did the concrete demolition. He is still sore. I helped dig the hole and carry buckets of mud and gravel up from the basement. Amazingly, I never did get sore. Jonathan did the installation of the pit liner, pump, and all the pipe to run the water out of the house. And then he did one more washing of the floor and wiped down the laundry tables, appliances, etc, to get it good and clean downstairs. He's awesome. We will watch the sump area for a couple weeks before we cement around it. Til then we'll just put a cover over the whole spot so I don't drop laundry down into it. Which I am sure would happen.