Ian, my older son, went to spend the night at my parents house. He loves spending the night with them!
While he was gone my husband & I got to work on canning some strawberry jelly & making some strawberry wine. I took lots of pictures & plan to do a future 'how-to' post at a later date. Jameson was a very good baby while we worked in the kitchen. I think we started around 6pm and didn't finish until midnight. We did stop to eat dinner & put the baby to bed so we weren't in there for all those 6 hours!
Our first mishap, although minor, was that my strawberry jelly didn't set up. So, I'm calling it strawberry syrup! LOL It's very yummy & we've already had it on pancakes & ice cream. It's really no big deal & I'll be changing the recipe for the next batch. The strawberry wine is doing great & still fermenting away. We won't get to taste it for weeks to come.
The major mishap of the weekend began Sunday morning. My sewing room is in the basement because Jameson took over my old sewing room upstairs. I'm not complaining about that because I got a whole lot more square footage.
We've had a lot of heavy rain this spring. Combine that with our 2 large maple trees in the front yard which drop large amounts of helicopter seeds all over the yard & into the gutters. Justin had cleaned out the gutters twice already but it was enough that the water seeped in under our garage floor & into the crack in one wall of my basement sewing room. Along that wall I'd placed 4 book shelves. I happened to sit down next to one of the book shelves (to cut fabric) & glanced over at it & what did I see? Mold! I didn't even think about there being a crack in the wall when I put those book cases there.
I immediately pulled everything out of that one book case & this is what I found…
That's all water damage & there was only mold on the foot part. This book case has now been trashed! :( Luckily, I'd only stored sewing magazines & sewing books in there & the book case was an old cheap one. The books were a little damp but salvageable & not moldy at all. You can sort of see in the photo where some of the ink has discolored that backing too.
Here is where that book case stood against the wall…
This is the most damaged spot. I've scrubbed it up now & have a fan blowing constantly on the spot to hopefully dry out the carpet.
Here is where the book cases used to stand along that wall…
The good (expensive hard wood) book cases have moved next to an interior wall (next to the staircase) & the one good (cheap) book case is now on the only other interior wall. Here is moving in progress…
And here are the book cases filled back up…
The wall with the crack in it I decided to put my sewing table. I did this because it's open on the sides & bottom & much, much easier to pull away from the wall if I ever need to. I put it more towards the good corner where there was no water leakage…
And here is the rest of the room put back together…
The back wall with the wet spot on the left has been left empty. I'm not going to put anything there except a fan to blow it dry. My sewing table & ironing board are all set back up…
To the left of my sewing table I put a short book case that I stole from upstairs. I needed the extra storage space since I lost the big book case. And I have my vintage writing desk & an antique chest of drawers with more storage…
Further up the wall I moved my hope chest. Everything else to the left of it has stayed the same…
What a huge task! I spent all of Sunday & Monday moving, cleaning & reorganizing my sewing room. I had high hopes for the weekend… that I'd get my canning done (& redo the strawberry jelly), that I'd sew a few things, & enjoy the extra time with my husband before he leaves for 6 weeks of training. Well, I guess I should just stop making plans. But if I hadn't found that damage when I did that mold could have become dangerous & gotten me & the baby really sick since we spend the most time down there.
Overall we had a good weekend just with a few snags. I hope you all had a great Memorial Weekend! Here's hoping next year goes better… LOL
~Heather
What a busy weekend you had! I'm glad you caught the mold problem before it made any of you sick.
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