Set my sights

I think I have mentioned before that I am a little obsessive and anal.  I don't think I'm over the top, but if we're considered to be leaning a direction I'm tipping that way. 

One of my stresses are things that need repairing or fixing or completing.  I have a lot about my house that I love and a lot that worries me.  It's an old house, probably around 75 years or so, and it's a challenge to keep it in reasonable repair.  We've done lots to the house and have made tons of repairs and even some improvements, but one of the worst things about it is the basement.  It's dank and leaky and musty.  There are cracks and water stains on the walls and new ones seem to be cropping up all of the time.  It's an event when it rains around here because it almost always involves basement clean up.  I hate waking up at night and hearing it rain hard, because I lie in bed worrying about what we'll wake up to.

If we had a ton of money we would pay to have the walls down there repaired, but our house would never absorb that cost.  Besides, we don't have a ton of money.  I've been after R to work on it with some waterproof concrete patch we got from a friend who said it was recommended by his handyman/carpenter.  That was a couple of years ago, and it's been bugging me since.  Not him, apparently.  Just me.  Last weekend I brought it up again, but this time I told him I didn't want him to look at the whole job and the whole mess down there and instead should focus on a small part and see what happens.  We have a tiny room under our garage that we call the "still room" (because the house was reportedly built by a bootlegger and there is a vat in there that was used to brew hooch -- along with a manhole to the garage so transactions could be done in private).  It is leaking water from the outside garage wall and it appears to be getting worse.  Since the room is small, it's not an overwhelming task to make repairs in there, to repaint the walls and the floor, and just see if we can make a difference.  The garage floor above is in good shape, but when my car is parked in there with any snow or salt on it, it melts and leaches through and I think is beginning to cause damage.  So I also got some concrete sealer to use to clean up the garage floor and seal it good so it won't leak through to the basement.

Somehow, finally it made sense to him when I broke it into smaller pieces, so last weekend he started the project.  It's already made me feel better to see it started, and I'm hopeful it will improve the situation.  I know the basement will never be beautiful, and I have never cared about that.  I'm just aiming for pretty dry.  I've set my sights on pretty dry, which I think is pretty reasonable, don't you?

And then I'm going to focus on the rotting window sills....