rowyn

telnar asked me that question earlier this morning, when we were talking about the work I'm doing in the basement. The funny thing is, for all my entries and grousing and effort, I don't hate it. I don't really hate it at all. It's a lot of work, and it's tiring, and I don't like how much time it's eating up. But, really, it's not so bad. It's sort of fun, in a weird kind of way, getting all suited up in cruddy clothes and sitting in the muck hacking away at the wall. I can see how much progress I've made, and how much is left to be done. It's all solid and tangible.

I've been taking frequent breaks -- I worked on it a little more last night, and a little more early this morning, and a little more about an hour ago.

The worst part about the leak is that it's much, much, much worse now than it was before I started. The sump pump is in a corner of the room, and it turns out, just a little bit higher than the middle. So water's been trickling in and running towards the area where the carpet's still down. At an alarming rate -- it takes maybe three hours to reach the edge of the carpet level. Before I went to bed last night, I threw down some towels to try to channel it back to the sump pump -- but of course, that didn't work. So more of the carpet got wet last night (I didn't like that carpet anyway) and I pulled back more of it this morning.

kagetsume had suggested, half-jokingly, that I could build a channel along the wall and leading to the sump pump. That idea is starting to look real tempting about now.

But I haven't changed my plan of attack yet. I take breaks whenever I find myself thinking, "Hey, this is good enough, let's throw down concrete and call it done". I haven't done this much only to mess it up now. Dangit, I'm gonna do it right. Or at least, as close to right as I can manage, which may not be all that close. Well, we'll see. I can at least do better than paint on top of cement on top of caulk. :)

I figure I'll go down soon and finish the chiseling -- not a whole lot left to do on that. Then another break, then I'll clean out the cracks really well. Then another break, and then I'll start plugging the leaks. Even if my new cement doesn't seal it completely, at least I won't need to break out the mop every two hours! I do want to get at least that much done today, so I don't have to wake up to another tide washing over my floor.

Back to it. Hope I can get all the chiseling done now.