Nightmare #2: The basement (part 1)

After we'd lived in the house for about a month, we had the remnants of a hurricane move through and got about 5 or 6 inches of rain in the process. We were very unhappy to find that the carpet in our basement was soaking wet along the back wall. Thus began the next nightmare, the basement. We'd never know when it was going to leak! The worst leak occurred last month when I watered the hostas along the side wall of the house. It was then that we decided to rip the paneling off the wall and see what was going on with that wall. We have a big crack, but it also seems that the joint between the wall and the floor is leaking. After a lot of research, it appeared that our options were to chisel out the joints and fill them with hydraulic cement (a BIG job, it's a long wall) or dig out the foundations and add more drainage (this had been done previously, apparently). Either way, it was too big of a job for us, so we called a waterproofing company. They said that our best bet was to let the wall leak and put in drains to a sump pit in the rear of the basement. This way, the water will come in but be directed to the sump pit and pumped out. Hopefully. The price was reasonable, and guaranteed, so we've decided to go for it. The company starts the work next week, so this weekend we had to finish removing all of the framing and walls from the area to which they will need access.

The basement before:

Our friend Dr. P was nice enough to come and help us on Saturday afternoon... blogger image uploader and I aren't getting along so please see part 2 for the demo.