studioporn

here's how it looks along the front wall of the house:

and where the fireplace used to be:

it's kind of funny how all the concrete i poured in there ended up coming right back out. they had to trench along the front of the fireplace since the footer extends out to there. otherwise they could've just run right along the wall.

all along the wall they drilled drain holes into the base of the concrete block to drain out water that had accumulated inside the cavities:

they got quite a bit of water out of the side wall, as evidenced by the trench in front of the fireplace footer:

after the fireplace, the trench passes under the load-bearing wall and then makes a 90 degree turn to head towards the perimeter wall:

then it goes right under the water heater (sorry this one is so blurry):

here's a cool pic of it tunneling under the water heater:

and lastly, here's the sump pit in the far corner of the house:

i grabbed a shovel and lowered it into the water to see how deep it went; there's at least 12-14" of water there, plus the inch or so of water running along most of the trenches.

they also excavated the ground outside along the side of the house to install the french-drain-like contraption for the outside. between these two solutions, we should have a pretty water-tight studio. i'll still have to tackle the back wall at some point, but the problems there are much more minor and are much more easily fixable from the outside.