After our origial fiasco with the basement flooding, we wound up pulling up the entire carpet and padding in the basement. We lived like we had just moved in, with stuff sprawled everywhere, things packed up in boxes, and a concrete floor that give us cold feet. It was a drag!
After running fans and drying out the floor, we went to Home Depot and had them install an whole new carpet in the basement. This took a little over a week, what with scheduling a measurement first, scheduling a day to be home for the installation, and finding a time to do this. Finally, at the beginning of May, we got our new carpet put in. It's a lovely Berber-style, and it looks good.

Now comes the good part. Last week, we had another torrential rain and hailstorm in Denver. Every time it rains nowadays, Leah and I cross our fingers, hoping the basement won't get wet again. So Monday night it rained HARD for about an hour, flooding streets and creeks. The next morning I was awakened by Leah's screaming from downstairs, "JOEL! THERE'S WATER IN THE BASEMENT!!" Our hearts sank as we found the same thing happening to our new carpet. It wasn't quite as bad as the first time, but knowing that our new carpet was less than two weeks old, and here we go again, using the wet-vac and sucking up water. Luckily, I was home Tuesday for jury duty, which I didn't have to do, so I could devote time to getting the water removed....again!

In the meantime, my friend Mark and I decided to cap off two of the gutter spouts that were going directly into the ground, and re-routing them away from the house. I also cleaned out the gutters around the house, and noticed several were blocked with mucky leaves and mud. Between the new drainage and clean gutters, I think we may have resolved our flooding issue. Let's hope so!