Lamentations on a Lost Basement

I used to fear our basement when we first moved in. There were spiders and sprickets and the windows were old and gross. I'd dart in and out of our dusty, cobwebbed unfinished laundry room to do only what was absolutely necessary, and fold the clothes upstairs. The bathroom downstairs was seldom used--only the toilet and the sink, and only during moments of urgency. We definitely never used the shower. There were also certain areas of the basement that reeked, but we just avoided them. You might think that our fears of the basement would have kept us from letting Benjamin ever go down there, but you'd be wrong. That was his play space. That was where most of his toys stayed, out of sight. That's where the TV sat, only to be used for movies and occasional shows. In the small bedroom, my art stayed stowed away. Our basement enabled us to enjoy all of our uncluttered upstairs living space. About two Springs ago, we had our first incident down there- the plumbing, which was not accessible for repair. So the wall and ceiling were ripped in that spot so our kitchen sink bilge water would no longer leak all over the carpet down there. The carpet on that side only got worse as the Spring rains repeatedly pounded it. We finally wet vacced it at the end of the season, and it was fine.

The next year, the other side of the basement got soaked from the Spring rains, destroying my art room. The mold got worse and worse until we could no longer ignore it, and more drywall was torn up to expose seriously cracked and bowed foundation walls. We ripped much of the carpet up, as it was exposed to the mold. We hired a company to repair part of the drain tile and sump pump, and left it at that. During this time, there were also mice in the basement bathroom. Lots. And the only thing that seemed to work were those sick sticky traps.

Once the drywall was removed, we realized that our home's value had significantly decreased, and there wasn't much we could do about it. It would cost thousands to repair the bowing foundation, thousands more to fully waterproof it, and even more to refinish it. Perhaps it was this feeling of defeat that kept us from immediately cleaning up the piles of rolled up carpet, drywall chunks, Styrofoam pills and nail covered boards. So we just ignored it.

We finally cleaned up the mess this week because of the recent flea infestation (You can laugh now. Yeah, we have fleas). I guess O.C. wanted to leave lots of little things behind to help us remember him. He liked to sleep on a dirty blanket down there, which was brought upstairs a few weeks ago. It's been an exhausting several days ever since. I feel like the cleaning never ends, the mountain of laundry just keeps replenishing itself, and the boys keep picking them up no matter how often I bathe and examine them. But I think we're winning. We've been trying to get out of the house as much as possible, and I even set off a fogger. I couldn't figure out how to turn off the pilot light during the fogging process, so when I realized my mistake I rushed home, heart racing, just hoping that I hadn't burned down our house. I admittedly haven't had many warm feelings toward our house lately, but that moment of panic made me realize just how much it means to me. Perhaps we were never meant to have a basement in this house, but it was nice while it lasted. Note to self: basements are way over-rated, especially in wet, buggy climates.