Back in 2007, when we had some heavy rains, we discovered that the downspout emptied off the roof right next to the foundation and water seeped into my daughter's basement bedroom. We waterproof painted the corner of the room, replaced the carpet and added a downspout extension directing the water away from the foundation and have had no futher problems since.... until now.
A couple years ago my daughter moved out and the room happily became my sewing room. I hadn't been able to get into my sewing room for the month of December. I was busy with work and family and holiday plans and travel. But, on New Years Day I went down to spend the day sewing. Unfortunately, that didn't happen. One again, we discovered the rug was squishy wet; this time from the corner all the way into the middle of the room. We discovered that someone had stolen the downspout extension and all that rain we had in December emptied off the roof next to the foundation and seeped into the room.
We replaced the downspout extension and I ran two dehumidifiers for several days, but the damage was already done.
My handyman was busy on another job, so my youngest daughter came over to help. We removed all the furniture and boxes of fabric stash, and cut up and remove the carpet and padding. I'm glad we did because although the carpeting was beginning to feel dry to the touch... the padding underneath was still wet and some mold was forming. Luckily, my stash was mostly in or piled on top of plastic containers, so no fabric was destroyed.
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| You can see the corner we painted with waterproofing the last time. |
My handyman stopped by a couple days later and determined that the wood behind the wallboard was rotting. He suggested cutting and removing about 2 ft of wallboard and checking the extent of damage hidden behind it. He hopes he might be able to determine where the water is coming in and plug it so this doesn't happen again. Then we will replace the wallboard and hide the damage with a beadboard chair-rail so we don't have to deal with taping and plastering and sanding and dust! Then a fresh coat of paint before we have new padding and carpeting installed. Hopefully, work will begin next week as soon as he finishes up his current job and I can be back in my studio by Valentines Day!
