Day #9: Home Ownership. Part 2: Should I buy stock in Lowe's?

When I was younger, I envisioned home improvement projects as being kind of cute.

Yes, cute.

I imagined my honey and I, paint brushes in hand, singing and dancing to the music as we tinted the walls of our little love nest. He would tap my nose with the paintbrush and get a little splotch on me. I would giggle...

What I Know Now: We tackle at least two home improvement projects a year and not a one of these projects were "cute." Dust isn't cute (Mike: "Honey, I didn't know you owned grey shoes just like those black ones you like." Me: "I don't."). Back pain isn't cute (Mike: "Honey, you've been bent over studying the ground all day. Did you lose a contact?" Me: "No. We ran out of Advil."). Tools sprawled all over the house aren't cute (Mike: "Honey, why is there a chisel in my sock drawer?" Me: "Because the nailgun was in mine.").

Oh, and this happened:

Yeah, that's a toilet. In my living room. Shit's gotta go somewhere, right?

Haha. Get it? Punny.

Anyway, most of these home renovations began as the solution to a problem created by Previous Homeowner, who, apparently, looks for the easiest, cheapest, fastest way to get his wife to stop nagging him about [insert issue with home here]. He then went to Lowe's and found the "Most Likely To Break Inside of a Year" aisle and purchased everything he needed for the project.

Example:

So we go to look at the house, and we stand on the deck and look to our left. The deck stops and a pit of rocks roughly the footprint of a Hummer begins.

The realtor says "Its probably just a drainage thing."

Us: "Oooooh."

Pause.

Why did this not raise an alarm, you ask? Why didn't this comment hit us like an APB from homeowner hell, you wonder?

Probably because we wanted this house so damn bad, you could have told us a team of termites had assembled this rock pit to wage war against rats in the crawlspace and this would have been our response:

"Oooooh."

And we would have nodded, and looked at each other like, I-didn't-know-they-could-do-that-did-you-know-they-could-do-that? and followed you into the kitchen to look at something shiny.

So we move in. A week later, we're relaxing in front of the TV, the rain is pouring and making a soft pitter patter on the roof, and we're smiling at each other, thinking Isn't this nice?

Then Mike hears something in the basement. We go to investigate. Is this the a/c kicking on? Did the washing machine have a meltdown? Has the termite war begun?

I would have preferred any of those options to what really happened: Our basement flooded. While that first time wasn't too bad, the basement did continue to flood everytime it rained. And when I say flooded, I don't just mean a little seepage through the foundation. I mean bucket-bailing bad. I mean, wake-up-at-2am-and-mop-until-you-gotta-go-to-work bad.

I suggested we just build an ark and say eff it, but Mike thought there might be some more cost-effective options out there.

My favorite basement-flooding moment:

But first: Some important Mike background. In case you don't know, Mike works in a lab running tests on people who can't seem to learn to put a sock on dude's ____ and stay outta trouble.

Mike also brews beer, which is probably an appropriate hobby for someone who sees as many idiots as he does in a day.

Anyway, one night, Mike is working late and I'm home alone and it starts to rain. Then it starts to pour. Then there is a full-on effing monsoon happening and I know my basement is going to fill up like swimming pool in T-minus...

Sure enough, it does and I'm at a loss. Its coming in faster that I can get it out. Mind you, my getting-it-out methodology is pretty piss-poor: I'm soaking up water in old bath towels, which I'm wringing out into buckets and then dumping outside the garage.

I know -- not exactly efficient. So I'm freaking out, and I call my father-in-law, Marty, who senses how helpless I'm feeling and drives over in a monsoon to help me deal with all this damn water.

He pulls up, steps in the garage and I'm all like:

"Oh my god thank god you're here because I was totally freaking out and I don't' know what to do because its just coming in so fast and we really need a shop vac but Mike hasn't gotten it yet and I'm just blah blah blah..."

The whole time Marty is staring at the "buckets" of brown, poo-colored rainwater.

I say "buckets" because these are Mike's beer making buckets. You know, the ones that are supposed to stay completely sterile through the entire beer-making process. The ones he paid good money for. The ones that now look like the toilets at some 3rd world prison.

Those buckets.

Marty is staring at them because he knows this is bad. He knows I have now just made a Huge Wife Error and he is wondering whether or not he wants to be around when Mike comes home and sees his precious brewing equipment filled with rank-smelling basement water and topped with bug corpses.

But before he has a chance to decide, Mike is home. And Mike is staring too.

Me, I'm clueless. I'm still like "Oh thank god you're here because I've been at this for hours and I'm still not making any headway and these buckets are just filling up so fast and blah blah I'm an idiot blah..."

Mike wins the Husband With Patience Award, though, because despite me destroying his favorite toys, he said:

"Um, baby, why did you use my beer buckets for this?"

Me: "Idaknow. They were just, like, here."

Mike: "Okay, let's empty them out and try another strategy."

Which is exactly what we did.

This event prompted the Great ReGrading of the Backyard as well as the Great Basement Wall Rebuilding (in which the mason told us, "this is the worst job I've ever had." Mike and I high-fived) and the Ultimate Basement B-Drying, all of 2009 and none of which were "cute."

But $12K later, that basement is dry as Snoop Dog's mouth after a fatty and the buckets will live to brew another batch.