When it rains, it pours...Also a silver lining in this cloud

Oh my heck! As if things weren't bad enough for us right now. I was sitting in my favorite ($5 yard sale) chair on Friday night and the heater kicks on. And I said to the hubster "wow that sure smells damp and moist".
So I went down to the basement where the heater is, and discovered that we have a leak somewhere in our plumbing. Now, Mr. Clay ( as we all lovingly refer to, as my hubby) can't make the trek downstairs right now, on account of his oxygen and the open flame of the furnace. So it was up to me to figure out the situation. Mind you, I made this discovery near bedtime.

We have a small ( I mean COZY ) home. It is an old miner's camp house, only 766 sq ft on the main level....And then there is the basement (which I call the dungeon). Half of the basement is a big dirt slope and the other half I took over for my studio. On my side I painted the bricks white, wallpapered the ceiling in light colors, and put in a white linoleum floor over the concrete. Since I share my space down there with 'The Dark Side' (the wild untamed and not well lit, dirt side), I have approximately 57 spider traps so that no spider or creepy crawlie can make it past into my domain. It took me the better part of last summer to complete, and when the temperatures heat up, it is the coolest place in the house; everyone wants to be there!

Now the leak is coming in on the 'Dark Side', and the dirt is damp looking and dangerously close to my studio side. And of course there is all kinds of crap piled over there-not quite junk, but certainly not stuff I want to go poking around in-old tools and boxes and such. I went to bed with the words of Mr.Clay rattling in my brain "well I hope it doesn't break loose and flood the whole basement". So naturally I slept a whole 20 minutes that night!
Yesterday, Saturday, I got an early start and began removing everything from the dark side, taking it upstairs and outside to a trailer to be able to sort it later. It took me almost all day, and I still have a couple of heavy misc. items to take care of today. But I got it cleared out enough to know that the leak has made it more than just 'damp'; there are rivers and puddles, and mushy mud...I laid out boards to walk on.
I made it Mr.Clay's job to call a plumber-since he is the one who didn't take care of this plumbing issue years ago when I asked. Of course, it's Saturday afternoon, and no one is answering their phones...except one-and he is out in the desert riding horses...lol. Did I mention we are out in the country? Desert country :)
Now we have been quoted 6K, 8K, & 10K in the past to redo our plumbing; and there is no way that we have that kind of $$$ right now, but we can't afford to ignore this problem. So Joe plumber comes after his horse ride, and says the leak is from the water line coming into the house, and we'll need a back hoe to dig up the front yard and also to hand dig under our brand new sidewalk, and I'm thinking "Ka-Ching!" And says he can do it for $1,400 !! And that includes replumbing the bathroom and kitchen too...And he can have it done on Monday!
How lucky was that???
The leak however, has saturated the dirt so badly that I didn't want to take a chance on it running over to 'my sanctuary', so I filled 8 five gallon buckets of water, called the city, had them turn the water off, and we are now roughing it til Monday.
But oooh, I slept like a baby last night knowing my side would still be white when I woke up this morning :)

Now for some more goodly news- since I couldn't sleep Friday night, I was visiting the forums on Etsy , and there was a lady feeling generous-she wanted to make banners for 5 shops who have never had a sale or less than 5 sales. Since 12MidnightOils has never had a sale and was in desperate need of a banner, I jumped on the chance to grab a graphics designer to create one for me. And I absolutely love it! Her shop name is Drunce and I thank her 100 times over. Please visit her shop, and see if you find a treasure there for yourself. One of her specialties is making banners, and I peeked in at the other 4 shops who won, to see their new banners. All of them were fantastic! Thank you so much Drunce . There was definitely a silver lining to my 'leaky basement' cloud :)