The wall is no more, but now we have water

Yesterday was a pretty disappointing day as we learned the support column for the structural beam could not, in fact, be removed. So now we have to decide what to do with that beam and none of the solutions we currently can come up with sound all that appealing. We can replace the beam with a more modern and stronger beam that we can hide in the ceiling, or we can leave the support column where it is now in the middle of the traffic flow area of the kitchen/family room...

While I was out shopping and getting cement board, drywall, etc for the bathroom and laundry room, Jenni calls me in a panick about Dusty having caught a bird! WHAT THE? How does a dog catch a bird? Is this further confirmation of the barking cats theory of small dogs? I guess she caught and killed a dove and Jenni couldn't get her to drop it. So after calming her down and instructing her to get some work gloves and take charge and make her drop it, she had removed the mangled bird from Dusty's grasp and was off to bathe the 2 rascals...

But back to the house... On the bad news relating to the support column, I decided to take my new Dewalt circular saw and tear out the wall (except for this god forsaken support column). After about an hour and a half of figuring out where to disconnect the electrical from the main circuit and cutting and twisting of framing 2x4's, the wall was gone. We now have a lot of open space and as a bonus, we have access to the ceiling to be able to add recessed lighting to both the kitchen and living room!

This morning we awoke very early to the loud sounds of thunder and after getting ready for work I figured I'd check out the basement... water... WHAT THE HECK? The sump pump hadn't failed but for some reason the outlet it was plugged into was no longer functioning, so after plugging it into another outlet, it was working just fine. We didn't take on too much water, just some water in the areas around the sump wells. Thankfully I think I caught it in time to avoid any real damage to anything. We'll see when I get home.