New Nightmare

In an attempt to keep my New Year's resolution of not overwhelming myself, our New York trip is now on hold.  It's also on hold because the budget just took a big hit.

After the downstair's toilet backed up twice in two months, the plumber sent a camera down the sewer line yesterday.  Turns out the pipe is broken in several places and filled with roots.  The biggest area is under the play room; the smaller area is under the brick patio.  So the concrete floor of the basement play room needs to be removed, and part of the brick patio needs to be dismantled. To make matters worse, the situation is urgent.  Until the pipes are fixed, we have to shorten our showers and space them out.  We also have to space out flushing the toilets, and can do only small loads of wash that have to be delayed for an hour or two after a shower.

We're getting bids today, but need to schedule the job immediately.  I'm praying it can be done in two to three days, beginning either Monday or Tuesday.  However, because the concrete needs to cure for several days, no matter when they start, I'm looking at a week without a play room, the only safe place in our house for Jonah.  It's a nightmare.

Plus I simply can't believe we're dealing with another major basement repair.  Just a year ago, we were preparing the basement and garage for the anchoring of the front foundation wall, another expensive messy project.

After recent developments, I'm glad we never finished the entire basement.  I'm also glad we didn't spend a huge amount of money on the area we did finish and used easy-to-remove-and-replace carpet tiles on the floor.  Nevertheless, we sure are sick of moving furniture, toys, and storage as well as writing big checks for basement repairs.

(The good news is our monthly electric bill has been reduced.  Our house is all electric and we were on a $219 monthly budget.  But, because it's been so warm, our usage has been under budget for months.  As a result, January's bill is just $68 and our new budget is $201, starting in February.)