At the end of this summer we noticed some wetness in our basement. After some investigation, we discovered that when previous owners of the house had finished the basement, they screwed the drywall right into one of the main drainage pipes for the house. It wasn't really a problem until this past winter when the septic system apparently backed up, the outside drain pipe froze and broke, and sewage started backing up into the pipe with the holes in it.

Anyway, after a month or two of visits from various contractors, everything is finally fixed. Now we get to do the fun part of reorganizing the furniture and deciding how to best make use of the space downstairs. I have decided to try a more open layout. There will be less seating overall, but I think it will be a better use of the space, and will leave more room for when we move Angela's office downstairs as well.

This is a photo I took while the wall was ripped apart. The pieces of silver tape on the drain pipe are where the holes were. If you hover over the photo with the mouse, you can see the "after" photo I took after everything was repaired.

Technical Details: These photos were taken with my 5D Mark II + 17-40L at 17mm, ISO 3200, f/4 for 1/40th of a second.