Matching Tracksuits

I spent some time working outside; K stayed in the house. Typical summer Saturday.

Quite the change from the last week — three cars washed. Nothing else today.

The final coat applied,

and we have our basement back to normal.

Just in time for the in-laws.

Working on the other side now…

For the second time now, I’m working to stop water from coming into our basement. I know the real solution to the problem:

I don’t have the time to do that now, and we certainly don’t have the money. So for now, some bandaids with the hope that they will mitigate the problem to some degree.

One problem: a huge crack in the corner of the basement floor. The fact that there is significant concrete efflorescence tells me that the water on the other side of the wall is significant.

The bandaid? Some hydraulic cement. Will it keep the water out of the basement? I don’t know. Will it keep the water out of the concrete? No. To do that, see the video above.

There was one thing I fixed outside the house that might have a more significant impact:

The downspout into our water-collection bin was no longer centered over the opening, meaning that during heavy rain, much of the water just spilled down the side of the house — the same corner where I discovered the efflorescence.

I corrected that problem, but I’m no longer convinced that it’s even worth it to keep the barrel. I also replaced the overflow outlet with a longer piece of PVC so that it wouldn’t just dump it into the downspout diverter/channel/plastic-thingy-whatever-the-hell-you-call-it.

It’s probably none-too-soon, either: we’re expecting up to seven inches of rain this week, which would convert to 9,520 gallons of water coming off our roof.

Drinks on the back porch with my lovely girl, who has stuck with me and all my nonsense for almost 19 years now.

With all the mowing, trimming, cutting, hauling, collecting, sorting — this is all I’ve got for the day: the bushes I assaulted with a trimmer.

Soon — very soon…

We have a lot of big trees in our backyard — trees that if they fell the wrong way would cause a lot of damage. I tell myself that the root system for such a tree must be massive and must be deep.

Not like this — a large area but not much depth.

A house I saw on the way home from work experienced one of my greatest nightmares as a homeowner with children…

Hopefully no one got hurt.

We found a little injured friend on the road this evening. He’s not much bigger than a bottle cap, and when we first brought him in, placing him in a small basket with a cap of water, he was barely moving, breathing heavily, and keeping his eyes closed.

“It would probably be the merciful thing to just euthanize the poor guy,” I said, “rather than let him suffer through the night only to die a painful death.”

“No, animals have a way,” K assured me.

We will see tomorrow, I suppose.

Today was so busy that I forgot all about the after picture.