…and we are still crap at updating our blog. Sigh.

Since we’re on top of our Instagram game, I’ve added an Instagram feed to the blog on the right, just so you can follow along where we do update, even if you don’t have Instagram (*cough*Mom*cough*).

Here’s the briefest of status updates since I last posted in September 2017.The basement is still unfinished, as we continually get water when it rains too much or after a big snow melt. We will be digging out the foundation this summer, one side at a time, to patch cracks, waterproof it with Blueskin, and protect it with a Delta membrane. Since we’re down there, anyway, we’ll probably replace the weeping tile, too, and add some extra gravel for drainage. We’ve also got four window wells to add. It’s going to be expensive and time-consuming, but it will make the basement dry and usable again, which has been a sore spot for us since it flooded for the first time, and every time subsequently. Every step we take will make it that much better!

We just got new windows! (Not installed, yet.) One of the contributing factors to the flooding problem is the basement windows. The sills are sagging and rotting, as our house sits in the bottom of the shallow basin that is our yard, and there are no window wells. That means that snow, rain, run-off, and melt water collects and sits all around our foundation, and there is a particularly soggy spot right beside one of our basement windows, where we always get the first puddle when it floods. We did an efficiency Nova Scotia Home Energy Assessment last year, and our windows were marked as one of our biggest losers. We see a lot of condensation on our upstairs windows in the morning, as well, so there were many reasons to upgrade! Of course, now our budget is bust for a while.

Speaking of the soggy spot in the yard, that’s where I was trying to put the rain garden! I have come to the conclusion that this spot sees way more water collecting than just a garden could handle, so we’ve decided to go in a different direction, thankfully before I put even more energy into it! Once the foundation repairs are done on that side, we will be doing some landscaping to reduce the depression on that side of the house. I may also install a French drain to carry away any excess water, and any water that drains out of our swale, once we see how well the landscaping works. This is, of course, dependent on where our septic lies, as we have yet to confirm its exact location.

We got our electrical panel updated, and now we’re on breakers instead of glass fuses. Our main objective was to be able to do our own laundry, and the updated panel made that a reality! Thanks to our electrician’s work and Mo’s Dad, we have laundry set up in our basement now. The house originally came with a washer installed in the kitchen, but it leaked all over the floor the first time we used it. There was no dryer at all! So out the broken washer went, and we were down to zero laundry capability. Mo’s Dad wrangled us up some cheap used machines, fixed them up, and once the electrical circuits were put in for the machines, Mo’s Dad was able to install them. Our first dryer gave up the ghost pretty quickly, but it had been a small investment, so we went crazy and bought a new one! We’ve been living in laundered bliss ever since.