Set back or motivation?

Yesterday we had a wonderful rep from Everdry come to look at our basement. When we purchased our house almost 2 1/2 years ago, the owners disclosed that there was a bit of dampness that would occur on the stairs leading to the basement only after a very heavy rain. We said, okay, it's a very old house (at least 125 years), that's understandable. The steps that lead down are actually all cement and used to be outside, leading off of a back porch.

However, since we've owned the house, we've more than just a little dampness and it doesn't take a torrential rain for it to occur. My Dad and I thought we had it figured out, all stemming from the fact that was used to be the porch foundation, was now part of our basement wall. He estimated we could remedy the situation, for only a few hundred dollars and about a weekend. Awesome.

Christmas comes and we want to get our tree out. Pull out the box (no one judge about the artificial tree, there's a story and it will come later), and the whole bottom is rotted out. This is on the complete other side of the basement from where we thought we had it figured out.

Now, normally this isn't a problem that would creep up on a person, but the people who lived here before us did a pretty decent job finishing the basement, even though is was a cellar at one point. The walls are all insulated, built out and covered with very nice wood paneling. There is indoor/outdoor carpet glued down on all the floors. And for all intensive purposes, it's a fairly nice, though tiny, basement. This prevents us from seeing any dampness that is behind those well-insulated walls.

So this leads to me calling Everydry, a wonderful guy coming out and showing us that we basically have dampness creeping in from everywhere and two different kinds of mold starting. Spectacular. And if we say yes today, we can get a $2,000 discount and have it only cost us a little over $11,000! If we can't do it now, the estimate stands at about $13,500. We just can't do that right now. So, we're waiting until next year, when we hope our financial situation is a little more breathable.

Positives are: We know what's going on, my husband's on board with me with this AND financially, which is truly a miracle I think, and we know how much we need to save and to not store anything important down there.

But what about my garden? They'll need to dig a trench all the way around the outside of the house, right through where I hope to be planting? Growing our own veggies and more will help with the money portion, but I'm worried. With Square Foot Gardening, you supposedly only need 6" of dirt and can create boxes with bottoms that can be moved around. This wasn't my original plan (having bottoms, anyway) but it might have to be. Oh well.

We'll just keep praying nothing drastic happends between now and then!