I missed blogging in July. That bothers me on a number of fronts.

The biggest was the two year period between 2009 and 2011 where I didn't blog anything because I was overwhelmed with everything else going on in my life, including the birth of our first child.

When I get overwhelmed, I get fixated. I struggle to do more than one task because I have to finish the Thing. Usually along with that comes a bout of depression, which makes me want to leave the house less, to do anything “fun”, or struggle to relax because I should be doing the Thing.

The Thing

For the last few years, the Thing was the damage to my basement from the derecho and the three years of bad luck from the entanglement. The derecho was four years ago (in a few weeks) but just because it has faded from most popular memory doesn't mean that everyone has been able to move on. Other basement flooding, rotted walls, physical injuries, and losing both parents within a year of each other didn't help in the slightest. Or the three months I was going to Wound Care with a hole in my gut. Or countless other things that I don't want to remember anymore.

All I knew that if I pushed through, it would get better. I was hoping for a few months, not four years, but things are finally getting done.

My current fixation is also why I haven't been able to write anything new for a few years. Every time I sit down to write, I think about what I need to do to work to get the basement fixed.

Bathroom

The biggest problem was losing our basement bathroom when the toilet exploded. I blame much of the previous owner on that; who puts carpet in a basement bathroom? The give was just enough give that the pipe cracked from rocking and eventually it just broke.

What probably wasn't their fault was when the pipe in the slab cracked and flooded the entire area again with the contents of the dish washer.

A few rounds of water damage later and the entire room was gutted for a few years. Which is a bummer since I work in our basement which meant I no longer had an easy bathroom to visit between the mere minutes I have between most of my morning meetings.

But now, we have a new bathroom. We went with professionals on this on, which hurt a lot on the bank account balance, but I'm happy it was done right. I now have a tub I can fit in, another bidet seat (love those things), and generally it's great.

We also had to get an tankless water heater because a tub big enough for me is too large for most water heaters. Its taken a while to get used to, but it was something I've wanted for years and I'm glad to finally not run out of hot water in the house.

I could have done without the silverfish infestation when the plumbers didn't seal up the opening around the new vent and they decided to visit, but we're dealing with that.

Projects Keep Expanding

The bathroom project was only one part, mostly to deal with having stuff I've “inherited” from my parents. We decided to fix the rest of the basement at the same time, mostly repairing the water-damaged drywall and pouring down an epoxy floor so I could handle both my mother's library and my dad's furniture (and workshop).

I also figured since we had everything ripped out, it was a good time to run new networking, get a circuit run for my home lab, and all those little things that have annoyed me in the last decade of living in the house.

Of course, that led to almost a half year of moving stuff around to get space for the service people to do their things. Just my luck, their schedules resulted in me constantly rearranging the basement instead of pushing it in one room, get everything done, and then lugging. No, their schedules meant I was relocating entire rooms every few weeks from April to July.

But, as of earlier this week, the last of the service people have done their thing. All that is left is painting, a ton of cleanup, and them moving furniture into their “forever” location. Which means I also get my basement office back, a bathroom nearby, and things are going to finally settle once again.

Future Projects

This isn't the end, far from it. I still need to get bookshelves for my mother's library, repair the first floor's laundry room floor so it doesn't leak into my freshly repaired basement, and deal with countless little things. But that's part of being a home owner.

It is also something I can do (mostly) later.