Sunday Salon: The Construction Edition

For the past two weeks we have been having a water leakage issue in the basement.  What my husband thought was ground water seepage never subsided and just kept getting worse.  I was using the shop vac many times each day as well as laying down large beach towels to sop up the extra water that was coming in.  Friends, neighbors and professionals weighed in on where this water might be coming from. 

Here were the options:

1.  groundwater seepage (which we had pretty much eliminated)

2.  a tree root that was in the way of a tile line

3.  a plugged tile line

4.  a water supply issue

 Last Saturday we (meaning my husband and a former high school wrestler he coached) jack hammered the sidewalk apart so we could look at the tile lines.  On Thursday night we had a professional come and dig out the tile line and check for tree root problems.  As you can see from Little Sister's sign above, we no longer can use our front door.  We have a HUGE hole (see below) and our tile lines work just fine.

 By Friday morning we knew it was probably a problem with our pipes, specifically the pipes carrying water from our neighbor's well (which we share with them, but is on their property) to our house.  After trying to get a hold of them and then having them try to shut our water off (they have an emergency shut off for our well in their basement -which we just found out about on Thursday night)  and then realizing that the shut-off was broken, the plumber came yesterday to put a new shut off valve on.  Almost immediately after the new shut off valve was put on and the water shut off, our water coming into the basement stopped. Unfortunately we are without water for however long it takes for us to hook up to rural water.  There is a line out in front of our house, but we still need to have someone drill a hole and do whatever it is they need to do to get us hooked up.  Oh, please let it be soon.  Having no water is better than having no electricity, but it is a little difficult when there are five of us that need to use the bathroom occasionally.  

This is also the weekend my oldest daughter's good friend, Emily, has come to visit us.  She and  her family moved last summer.  Having her with us the past two days has been just like she was never gone.  We have gone to the pool twice, watched some movies, and gone out to eat.  Today she will go back home, but it has been great to have her around, and she has been a good sport about the mess we have going on here.

I have a few book reviews I plan on posting and am loving Mary Kay Andrews' newest book. Since it is raining here -again- I would love to curl up with it and read all day, which I doubt I have the chance to do. I can't do laundry or dishes, so my workload is somewhat diminished, even though it is all awaiting me at some point.

We've got softball games, a Girl Scout trip to Minneapolis, and trips to the pool planned for the week.  How about you? What are you up to?