There is a little children's book called "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie" that tells the fanciful tale of all the zany one-thing-leads-to-another sorts of events that unfold just by the innocent gift of a cookie to a mouse.
We have our own version of this story going on at our house right now. It's called "If You Give a Boy a Hammer". Or, maybe more accurately, "If You decide to remodel your basement".
Ok, so there are pictures here that are depicting the basement dig-out project that our fellow men from church so graciously helped us with last weekend. The story behind the scenes goes even deeper.
You see, the bathtub on the main floor leaks into the basement. It has for a long, long time, but it's come to the forefront of our minds as no one has spent a lot of time in the basement for an equally long, long time. So......we decided to replace the surround around the tub. Well, this is an old house and someone had replaced the surround a time or two before...over top of the prior surround which made things pretty hard to find proper molding for...
So, let's just redrywall, right? I mean, we have plenty of drywall from an auction Paul went to last year.
But, hey, the bathroom floor has also suffered the effects of said bath tub leak...so, let's see what we can do about that floor. It's only a sheet of plywood and some linoleum.
And, well, there are two part walls sort of in the way from another project that expanded our small bathroom into something a little bit bigger. This other was a decidedly more conservative project. This is where the boy with the hammer comes onto the scene. The part walls are in the way no longer. And the floor? It's history.
Now the entire bathroom floor opens up to the dark abyss of the basement below.
Did I say, it's been raining....and our friend hasn't been able to get here to dig the new drain out from the basement and the water that has been freshly streaming in. It has a few more inches to go to reach the old drain that is now 6 inches above the floor. So, we wait with just a smidgen of trepidation (at least Mom does) for the water to abait. There's just something about a house sitting on mud clumps that makes me a little uneasy. (That, of couse, is a little simplistic in its explanation, but essentially true.)
Anyhow, the saga continues and I do hope to post a "good news, it's done and turned out well" follow up.
Until then....I think we'd better get to the home improvement store soon before that boy with the hammer decides to remodel the rest of the house.....
