A little background: our house is a three story townhouse. Two modest bedrooms and one tiny bathroom upstairs. An open living/dining space + kitchen on the ground level. And an open living space/guest room + laundry in the basement. There was a bathroom in the basement when we moved in, but it was gross. We tore it out along with everything else, but we left the plumbing in place and saved the space for a new bathroom when we could get around to it. That was well over a year ago.
Fast forward to an evening in mid-June. We were planning to host our very first overnight house guest about a week later. I decided a couple quick updates in the laundry room might make our guest’s stay more comfortable. Since she’d have to hike up two flights of stairs to go to the bathroom, I figured the least we could do was make the laundry sink more appealing for brushing teeth and such. I even took a couple “before” pictures since I thought I might want to share the results if, say, I were to start a blog or something.
I planned to paint those pipes white (still not sure why Hubby wanted them left alone the first time around), cover them in the ceiling, paint an old mirror to hang over the sink, paint the electrical box white, and hang some art on the wall. I was feeling good about the painted pipes and painted mirror when I went to bed that night, but that feeling was replaced by panic when Hubby woke me a few hours later to tell me we had an inch of standing water on the laundry room floor. Fabulous.
See that window above the washer and dryer? It sucks. Not even close to well sealed. And just outside the exterior window well sits our rain barrel, which was recently installed there after a year of sitting way out by the back of our yard. Unfortunately, we hadn’t quite finished the job by installing the overflow hose, so when a torrential rain came that night Hubby had to run out and dump the overflowing barrel. But alas, the window well filled up with water anyway. Then it emptied. Into the basement. Serious mess.
Thankfully our little Sweat Pea and Peanut slept peacefully in their cribs so we could spend hours soaking up as much water as we could, all the while fearing that we’d have to replace the carpet in the living area (which starts about five feet from the back wall with the window). But three days of professional drying saved the carpet. We just replaced the pad. Phew. Luckily the only real damage was to the laundry room flooring, which will have to be replaced. No big deal since it was cheap (and apparently not meant for wet rooms–oops). We’re planning to have the adjoining bathroom-to-be tiled soon anyway, so we’ll just go with consistent flooring in the laundry area, too. We got the place put back together (including my little updates) in time for our friend’s stay and we installed an overflow hose on the rain barrel. If only we’d taken care of that $20 project before the $1300 flood. Oh well, live and learn. It could have been much worse….
Oh could it? How? Go ahead, guess.
Fast forward again to a couple weeks later when the basement FLOODED AGAIN. Same thing! Gah!
I know, I know, we sound like idiots. Why in the world would you keep a rain barrel next to that crappy window when you know it doesn’t take much to overflow it. (Just a 1/4″ of rain to be precise. Hubby did the math; that’s his thing.) Believe me, there was much self flagellation and gnashing of teeth after the first flood. We could have done so many simple things to prevent this, we cried: remembered to buy the overflow hose when we went to Lowe’s and had it written on our list, bought and installed that downspout diverter thing Hubby suggested a while back, or (perhaps most painful) not had a rain barrel at all since we have no real use for it yet. The list goes on. We might not have done any of those things before the first flood, but we’re no idiots (she says with sarcasm since you already know where this is going). We wised right up and installed the overflow hose. We tested it and monitored it closely through the next several rains until we were satisfied that it did the job. Phew, thank goodness we have that taken care of. Hah. As it turns out, the rain barrel wasn’t the problem (at least not exclusively).
There was a crazy rain on fateful day #2–a couple inches in 10 minutes or something like that. I had the girls at my parents’ house about 20 minutes away, but Hubby was there. He saw when the window well started to fill up and he took immediate action: towels and wet vac inside, then bailing the window well from outside. But the rain just came too fast.
We finally figured out that the real culprit was the patio we had laid last year. The front edge of the patio is about five feet from the back of house; the space in between is just dirt. The patio is slightly slanted down away from the house for appropriate drainage. To achieve that slant, the landscaping company built up the front edge, but they failed to point out (and we failed to realize the gravity of) the resulting slant down toward the house in this small area. Evidently it’s a problem. Actually, it seems to be fine during a normal rain; the ground just absorbs it. But a torrential downpour starts to run off, and it has nowhere to go but into the window well. And you know where it goes from there.
The carpet wasn’t quite as wet this time (and we weren’t quite as panicked), so we decided not to call the pros. We rented an industrial dehumidifier like they used and set up fans.
We also had to replace a little drywall this time. When I say “we” had to replace the drywall, I mean my dad did it all. We are ridiculously fortunate to have him and all his energy, DIY know-how, and tools nearby. Just really can’t overstate that. Sooooo lucky.
Dad and Hubby laid another new carpet pad and tacked the carpet back down using a rented carpet kicker. Silver lining: They did a better job with the carpet than the pros, eliminating an ugly and obvious bubble left right in the middle of the room after flood #1. Then Hubby added about 10″ of height to the retaining wall around the window well to block run off and we’re still deciding whether we need to dig out a french drain, too (hence the black tubing).
Note front edge of patio and rain barrel
In the end, flood #2 was actually less upsetting than flood #1. Losing that carpet bubble really was a lift. And just to close the loop, here’s an after shot of the laundry room (although you can see that it’s actually a “during” shot). You can see I did get the wall pipes painted, mirror up, electrical panel painted, and art hung. See that curtain on the right? That’s the unfinished hole that will someday be a bathroom. Someday, but not this summer. Sigh.