Tough week…

So I decided to take the week off as I found I still had vacation time and figured taking my birthday week off would be a good way to relax. My plans weren’t in depth as it was mostly a chance to take a break and maybe get some paintings done. My only other goal was to do my first round of figuring out my setup for an outdoor booth for art festivals I plan on trying to get into next year (I need to get some photos of it before too long so that I can submit it to be considered for some of the shows I’d like to attend.)

I think my last painting was a bit of an indicator of how things were really going to go and now I’m a little fearful of creating future dragons and what might result. 🙂 You see, my last painting was of a water dragon and the water certainly came over the weekend. As of Saturday night I already had a pump going for some of the water issues we typically have in our unfinished basement, but by the time I went to bed the rain had stopped and things looked fine.

Then came Monday morning following a very strong additional rainstorm that moved in during the night. I headed downstairs to check on things and found at least three inches of water on the basement floor. I made a quick run to to the hardware store to pick up a couple additional pumps and some water hose (the water was still flowing in fast.) I would later find that the issue was a blockage in the drainage. It’s an unfinished flagstone basement that has a little moat around the outside walls of the basement and the water flows to a low point that then uses gravity to dump the water down the hill past the house.

I was able to quickly drain the water, but by then it had done it’s damage. You see, I had become cocky in using the basement as my space rather heavily as we hadn’t had any real issues. I had both a home office setup for my day job, my art studio setup, and plenty of storage. It could have been worse though – I ran all the electric along the ceiling so none of the computers, my TV, or gaming system were damaged. I’ve since pulled most of it out of the basement as it will be a while before I can get it cleaned up and I probably won’t use it for an office until we can afford to handle the work to eliminate the water problem all together (it’s going to be a while as I need to put in some significant work in the back yard by adding french drains to route the water down the hill away from the house before we can even start managing the remaining water that will get into the basement.)

Storage wise I did loose a number of things I hate to see go and ended up washing a lot more that I could recover. Again, it could have been worse as I put up wire shelving that protected the majority of my valuables. As for my art, as much as I lost, it could have been far, far, worse. Most of the paintings that were on the ground were those that I didn’t like as much and even those fared better than I expected after drying out – acrylic paintings are rather resilient. Most of my favorite paintings were hung on some temporary walls I had put up and used as a background for my office zoom calls.

I lost a lot of new canvases, an amp for my guitar, and possibly my guitar and banjo (although they seem fine so far.) One of the worst things was the fact that just a week or two earlier I had put my youngster’s drum set downstairs so we will be at least replacing the base drum and some stands and pedals. I’m not sure if any of my easels will need to be replaced yet and I’m hoping my old motorcycle helmets will dry out, but most of the rest are things that I hate to lose, but can live without.

The biggest pain is all of the carpet we removed from a couple of rooms I pulled it from when I added new flooring for the mother-in-law suite. I had been using it like rugs in the basement which made it rather cozy. Now they each weigh several hundred pounds and I’m just trying to figure out how to get them up the stairs and out of the house.

So, I take stock of what made it through and work the lengthy road of cleaning up the mess. I’ll put my easels on cinder blocks when they aren’t in use and I’ll get some additional wire shelving to store all of my art supplies well off the ground. That lets me still have my art space for the time being and before you know it I’ll be back to creating and finishing up additional paintings. I might just have to take extra precautions though when it comes to painting my next dragon.