Yesterday morning, I was feeling a bit better (struggled w/ a horrible sore throat on Sunday....how a sore throat can take me down like nothing else!- it is always my "Achilles heel"!)

So Mon a.m, going to tackle some of these "to dos" on our house list....first, for the last few days there is 1.5-3" of standing water in our new part of basement...(we have a busy sump pump in our old part of basement, but new part needs its own due to design).  Off to Biddeford, we hit Home Depot (thinking, we'll go to a big box store for this investment, and save some money & have more options....) Well, options we had & hadn't - seems like a lot of folks must have wet basements as many models were sold out. We finally selected what we thought seemed the best available option and headed home. 

We arrived home, quickly opened box, ready to get this show on the road...and it seems our NEW sump pump was someone ELSE's first!  Yes, instruction manual folded open to page 3, w/water stains on it, no bags or packing material, and as we pulled pump out sand fell out of it....(a lot!)
We were frustrated & fuming...but we NEED a pump!  & Biddeford is about 20 min away!  UGH!  We decide to get as much sand out as we can & see if we can use it for a day at least, then bring it back- we set it up, plug it in....nada! (It all became very clear- they bought it, used it, broke it, repackaged it & returned it), then someone processed it & put it back on the shelf for us to buy!

I returned to HD w/ rage in my eyes both at man kind & at the lack of quality control in this store!  When the poor customer service employee asked me, "what do we have," boy did he get an answer!
Of course to complicate the situation, there is no more of this particular pump available -sold out!  Great, 'cause it took us 30 minutes to pick it out the first time!

Two employees scrambling, and I fuming pickout a new pump....which now needed 2 pkgs of 25'lengths of flexible hose, and 2 small parts to connect hoses together....excellent- more complicated! :)
They give me $50 off, which worked out as this pump was less expensive & to make up for now buying flexible hose which I did not need w/first pump! ("time & gas is expensive we understand." - I will say they handled the mad customer very well, including accepting responsibility & apologizing for having it on the shelf to begin with)

Got home, assembled with my small bit of patience (assembling is not one of my strong skills) and successfully got this thing running....hose out the basement window- and away from house. About 2 hours later, something in my brain clicked & I realized gravity was allowing the back flow of water from the hose back into the hole and causing the pump to run all too often- (almost immediately trigger the float), so pulled the hose BACK into the basement thru the window, and ran it at the slightest downward pitch which exists into the old basement into the pump hole over there....finally BETTER! not running quite as much & no more back flow it seemed. (I'm not convinced this battle w/ the water is over.)

Now that 3/4 of the day had been used up on project #1....it was time to hurry up & clean up- as we were having our first "official dinner party" at #64! (I believe I may have sat in the corner for just a minute & rocked in the fetal position) :)