Cautionary tale/ PSA.
My father [with my mother's sweat equity and creativity, and my child labor (I'm sorry but making your five year old fill five gallon buckets with rocks for months didn't happen for long after '73), his friends in other trades (other than electrical work), other contractors, and suppliers, took an upstate NY summer shack, demolished it, and built my parents' mid-century modern dream house.
It was mid-century modern down to its flat roof. Two peaked roofs with attic space were added years later.
Well, the lifted the house with hydraulics at some point and set it down on its new concrete block foundation.
To give you a picture the side of the basement to left of the bottom stairs was "the bones" of an apartment with roughed-in plumbing.
My brother and sister would each use this space as a bedroom many years later but it was never turned into an apartment (I'm getting to why).
The east half to the right of where the basement stairs were was a two car garage.
This is the problem they encountered and it had a very negative effect.
The land beneath the front line of the house (and the concrete wall constructed) reached from the front line down to the basement floor.
Now imagine (because it's true) the grading of the land went from this line forming the line at the house's floor at the front door, angled downward an entire story, on both sides of the house, until the slope ended at the level of the basement floor.
Well, the lot on the opposite side of the road was a hill with a house set on a cleared off piece of land.
Unfortunately, nobody knew knew, guess, was told, was able to predict, or otherwise had the knowledge to realize that water was flowing downward in elevation, underground, and hitting the concrete block front wall.
It was always damp and never able to be mitigated effectively.
The original flat roof didn't help. They never help.
The roof never resulted in the house leaking or damage in the walls, luckily. It just meant that rain removal with a proper gutter system and snow removal vis a vis roof maintenance caused my parents unnecessary stress.
Finally, there was a period of time when a leak developed between the concrete front door slab and the basement. This was fixed.
So, that's my PSA. You should consider the movement of water below the ground.
My parents' basement eventually exploded in mold. The smell became so bad that it hit you the minute you opened the door to basement.
Contractors working for my father's estate mitigated this damage and cleared out his hoarding mess (I have posted in other threads that he was a hoarder).
The quality of life this situation took away from everyone but me (because of timing), the probability that my family had mold poisoning, and the large amount of money required to fix these issues before the house could be sold during the probate process, form a large and unfortunate, to be honest, part of my memories.
At least the sale price didn't suffer at all. It's remarkable what you can accomplish with the right amount of money.
I don't know why my father was a hoarder.
I remember countless summers when my mother and I would rent various sized dumpsters and try to help him. He would take molded pieces of insulation that had been buried in the ground from the dumpster and say, "I might need this some day."
It was like Sisyphus moving a stone boulder up a hill and never being able to reach the top.
