Day 219- Thankful for resourcefulness and ingenuity w/photos

A week ago I got two different alerts on my phone for flood warnings in our area.  I checked the  basement, and (praise God) we had no flooding there!

But perhaps I need to back up and explain.

A little over 4 weeks ago we had a storm with lots of tree damage (you can read and see photos and video here).

My husband and I got out the chainsaws and opened up the driveway at both ends, and we hired someone with heavy equipment to take care of the rest.

A branch that fell on the roof only damaged 8 shingles, the gutter, and the drip edge. While we are happy that the roof itself was not damaged, the gutter has been a problem, as we have had quite a bit of rain since then. (It took quite a few days for the insurance man to come out, and even though we have someone who is supposed to fix it, I suppose there are others who were in line before us, and the continued rain has also probably slowed them down.)

Anyway, the gutter is bent right above the cellar door which leads to the basement. 

So we put a tarp over it.

We didn’t do it well enough at first, so we had flooding in the basement from water pouring down the cellar stairs and over the ledge into the basement.

So I redid the placement of the tarp and dug a small ditch to direct water from the tarp away from the house.

That helped, but it still wasn’t enough. I actually had to go out in the drenching rain a couple of times and wedge a big stadium umbrella upside down under the siding because the water was hitting the siding and going down under the top of the tarp and still managing to leak into the cellar opening.

I had to wait till it wasn’t raining so hard to get this photo.

The umbrella helped, but it wasn’t the best, because sometimes the wind would blow the umbrella away, and I would have to go back out and put it back in place.

So I got up on the roof between rains; I searched around the house for something to fit in the gutter to redirect the water and, thus, slow its plunge over the bent edge and onto the cellar door.

I found a piece of old siding and cut it to fit in just the right spot.

I’m really surprised that it works as well as it does. We still need the tarp because some water still comes over, but the volume of water coming over is greatly reduced. Most of it is going down the drainpipe and is not coming into the basement anymore.

Cellar doors and stairs – This area has actually dried out now.

We took our son back to college last weekend. The basement stayed dry while we were gone! Praise God!

In the past I have regretted being different. But the Lord has gifted us all differently, and when problems need to be fixed, sometimes it’s good to be able to think outside the box. That’s where all kinds of inventions and innovations have come from.

Today I’m thankful for God’s gifts of resourcefulness and ingenuity. 

I’m thankful for tools and raw materials to fix problems.

I’m thankful that God made me different and helps me to think outside the box.

I’m thankful that the basement has remained dry the last few times it has rained and that the temporary fix has worked so well. 

I’m also thankful that when the basement did flood a few weeks back, we were home and already had a portable pump that worked to drain the water to a more suitable place.

What about you?  Have you or someone you know ever been put in a spot where you had to use something unusual to fix a problem?  I’d like to hear about it.  Do you ever do DIY’s?