Yeah, I might be stalling...

I just got back from Home Depot. I bought some new lint-free cloths and vinyl gloves so I can FINALLY get started on sealing my Eames chairs with Penetrol. It's been so long. At least they are done being sanded. That part was not enjoyable. I have never been so itchy in my life. Truth be told, the Penetrol freaks me out. I have nightmarish visions of leaving them to set in the basement in all their glossy glory, only to find our cat curled up in one in the morning. Stuck. But in a few moments, I'm going to go down there, find something fun to watch on the computer (thank goodness for Netflix Instant Viewing...) and get started. I'm hoping I can at least get the backs done.

In other news, we have officially adjusted to the new room set up. I switched the new Danish Modern chairs (that no one is mentioning in terms of reselling or not reselling... at least for now) so that they are under the map. It looks SO much better. The height of those beauties works well on that wall.

That being said, my new dream is to find a modern sectional for the living room. After hours and hours of thinking over the best way to utilize that small space, I really think that would be ideal. We could have the main section on the wall where the map is, and then have it come out under the window. I've been checking Ebay and Craigslist, but most used sectionals are those big clunky beats that look like leather potato sacks and somehow have four recliners built in. Ew. It will be at least a year before we have the budget to get anything in there, but I want to keep an eye out to figure out what my favorite shapes and scales are. I'm completely infatuated with this one sectional at Room and Board, but like most Room and Board furniture, it's probably never going to be within our reach. But look at it! I think my favorite is this red color.
The second part of the sectional plan means putting our current couch down into the basement "living room" to create a den. It would be great to have a TV down there. There are no windows in that area, so it would be ideal. We just have to get a TV first... And this sectional. Am I the only one who gets depressed thinking about how expensive home decorating is? Am I the only one who feels guilty for wanting to spend money on these things and not just appreciating exactly what we have? I mean, I love our house, and I'm happy with what we have, but as we live in our home and figure out how it works, we are bound to come up with better solutions, right? Sigh.

So in the world of basements, ours is so frustratingly awful right now. It was flooded a couple of weeks back when a water main broke in the front yard. It's a very sticky and uncomfortable situation. The water main that broke in the front yard was broken during the HGTV renovation. They hit the water line with an auger. Oops. Apparently they didn't repair it well enough either, so it rebroke and we woke up one morning a couple of weeks ago with two to three inches of water in our basement and lots of the front yard flooded. We called the contractors, and they came out and fixed things. That first day, they had a plumber come out and replace that water main, then replaced the drywall in a small part of the basement kitchen where the new water main comes in. They also shop vacuumed up all the water, and left a giant dehumidifier thing for a while. But since then, they have had some pretty slow going on doing other stuff... *I* spent several hours on a Saturday ripping out the carpet in the basement bedroom that was most effected by the flooding. The berber carpet was glued directly to the concrete by some genius before we moved in, and it just would not dry. Our house smelled like a moldy locker room for several days. Even though I got that carpet out a few days after the flooding had been cleaned up, it was still completely soaked. It made it easier to pull up since the adhesive was so wet, but it was the most ungodly smell of all time. While I was pulling it out, I realized that the rubber baseboards (again, some dingleberry who "finished" the basement used that rubber commercial-grade stuff as baseboards throughout the entire basement) were not sticking to the drywall, and when I pulled one up a tiny bit, I noticed that everything was moldy behind it. So I ripped out all that rubber stuff in that one bedroom, and we asked the contractor to replace the bottom portion of the drywall in that room. They have been working on that over the last TWO weeks. Sigh. I know it's not a huge deal, but I wish they would just finish.

On top of that, the floor in the rest of the basement had been sealed and painted before we moved in, but the paint is now peeling up in most areas from being wet for so long. We also lost a lot of Roxanne's baby stuff (including her baby book), some of our books, some of our wedding stuff (including my wedding shoes, which makes me sad) and we have yet to check to see if Justin's amplifiers are still working. I think we are too scared. It's really overwhelming to have everything in your basement get wet and have to go through it all to figure out what is ruined and what can be salvaged. And the contractors have not offered at all to do any further repair to the floor or to compensate us for anything that was lost. Up until recently, Justin and I just assumed they would refuse and were sort of sheepish about the whole thing. But now I'm mad, and I feel like they should do more to bring our basement to what it was before this happened, since it is clearly not our fault. I'll keep you posted on what happens once I send my e-mail with a list of repairs I'm going to ask for. I'd kind of like to ask for them to replace the bottom portion of drywall in the whole basement, but I think I'm just going to focus on asking them to fix the floor. And for some kind of compensation for our personal belongings that were destroyed. I'm not going to go after them for pain and suffering or anything, but still. Justin is staying out of it for the most part. I think he thinks nothing will come of it. But seeing your daughter's ultrasound picture melted into the baby book that you had to save up to buy... It just brought out the mama bear in me. Any tips on how to handle this situation would be appreciated. I'm not good at being demanding and scary. But as my mom reminded me, we didn't sign up to be on this show expecting to have a flooded basement, and it's highly unlikely that any of the other homeowners had to deal with this. And everything about the whole experience was magical, and we really liked the contractors until this issue came up, so it's all just very unfortunate and disappointing.
This is someday going to be the guest bedroom/craft room. Right now, it is jammed with our belongings that were displaced by the flooding. Would you want to plow into that room and tear through stuff to see what's ruined and what's not? Keep in mind, Justin has already gone through about 10 boxes that were in the basement kitchen, and thrown out about six garbage bags full of our stuff. At least the walls in that room still look pretty... I just spent a weekend priming and painting in that room before the flood. The color is a lovely soft gray called "Artist Loft." Love it.
This is a spot on the floor where the paint is peeling up. It didn't look like this before the flooding. It now looks like this in patches in the entire basement.
This is what the drywall looked like behind the rubber baseboards. This is three days after the flooding, and it was still wet under there. And that black stuff? Yeah. It's mold. The floor looks like that because I had just ripped the carpet out. The yellow stuff is the old adhesive. We have to strip it (using more noxious chemicals) and then repair any cracks/holes in the concrete, seal it, and then paint it. Fun.

OK. I've stalled enough. On to the chairs...