It's melting!

It's no secret that Eric and I are not very handy around the house, nor are we very good when it comes to lawn care. We just don't get that warm fuzzy feeling by having the perfectly pruned lawn. Sure, we love the look of it and envy each lawn we see, but we know it's just not something that we can bring ourselves to focus on. For all you lawn care experts out there, keep on keepin' on so we can continue to admire your work!

With all the above being mentioned, it is a near miracle I noticed what could have been the start of a weekend full of cleaning the basement. I walked out of the house on Friday and noticed a gigantic puddle forming at the foundation of the house. After I examined the problem, I realized that all the snow melting from the roof was running down the gutter just fine....the problem came when the downspout didn't extend far enough to make it's way over the hill. Thus everything coming down was coming straight back to the house foundation. SHOOT!!

This is where Karen "aka McGyver" Smidt came to the rescue of the basement! I ran to the basement to make sure no water had made its way in...nope! Perfect, I thought! I didn't have enough time to run to the store to get a downspout extender so I had to figure out what I had in the house that could work. I won't even begin to share all the crazy ideas that went through my mind, it would just be too embarrassing! The solution is embarrassing enough!

I remembered that we had an old vacuum in the store room (yes, it should have been thrown away years ago, but we just haven't gotten around to it). The vacuum had a hose extender attachment....perfect!! How should I attach this vacuum attachment to the smashed downspout? (yeah, there was an incident with the lawn mower last year that we haven't quite fixed yet....I told you, this stuff is just not our cup of tea!) DUCT TAPE!! It fixes everything right? The smashed downspout turned out to work quite well as it made all the water go to one side so I wrapped a whole lotta duct tape around the gutter and vacuum attachment....tada.....a ghetto down spout extender!!

and the water really runs through it...away from the foundation!!

I have to admit, I was really proud of my quick fix. Who would have thought to use a vacuum extender?!?!? ME! I'm not sure that we learned any good lessons out of this though?!?!? Keeping an old vacuum and a smashed downspout all turned out to be useful. Hmmmmm....it's almost too encouraging don't you think?