mini-update
nothing major to report. i was out of commission yesterday due to some sort of infection which was causing my throat to swell up. what should've been a 3 hour ER visit or thereabouts turned into 9 hours, thanks to UPMC switching to a completely new computer system this week which was confusing everything, plus stupid little things like the lab losing the blood samples that were taken from me. joy.
anyway, my throat's doing much better today and while i wait for the comcast guy and the carpet-measuring guy to show up, i'm prepping the lounge/bathroom area of the basement for pouring the leveling mixture. with any luck i'll get everything poured this afternoon and be able to take some nice photos tonight.
we have a civil engineer coming out on friday morning to assess the water problems we've been having. i've been told by people in the trade that these companies that specialize in this kind of stuff charge an arm and a leg to do the same type of repairs that one can do on one's own. which is pretty much what i suspected, but given the proximity to the neighbor's property and all her concerns, doing it ourselves isn't really much of a choice if we want to get off on the right foot. i was talking with our mason today, and he says probably what they'll do, which is very similar to what i was going to do this past weekend, is dig down to the foundation, cover the entire exterior wall with portlant cement and continue this down to the foundation and make it curve away from the house to provide a lip of sorts, cover all of this with tar, fill the dirt back in, and maybe provide some sort of ground covering. grading away from the house may or may not be necessary (or doable, seeing as how this would require altering the neighbor's yard), same thing with french drains.