Too much house work & destroyed the yard.
Wife and I bought the house last spring and although its solid & straight, there was some water issues in the basement. Water was seeping near the bottom of the foundation in one of the closets and although it didn't really matter in there, it's not going to get better. With the basement being finished (and too nice for us really) if it leaks significantly its going to need carpet, drywall, insulation, ect so might as well get at it. The cost of this is less than fixing the basement if it does get wet. Plus, we wanted to get an egress window put in one of the basement bedrooms to make it "legal" and add some light & air downstairs and make it less of a dungeon.
Doing it ourselves cost about 1/3 to 1/4 of hiring it done. Wife grew up with her dad flipping houses and I am rarely afraid to tackle a project so we said why not. House was moved to this lot in the mid 80's and it is cinder block basement. Just had some hairline cracks in the block and the house is on real sticky clay so there really wasnt anywhere for the water to go when it down poured. Wife's family friend is an excavator operator by profession and waterproofs basements for a living so we hired him last weekend and we excavated around the basement, sealed the walls, installed drain tile & pearock. Used about 5 yards of pearock, 150ft of drain tile, and 30 gallons of tar to seal the walls.
Rented a mini skid yesterday and finished back sloping the yard and put the rest of the dirt back in the holes.
Still have to demo the old concrete steps and build some new wood ones for the front of the house along with till the rest of the yard and replant grass, but hopefully it will solve our water issues. The yard was all crabgrass from decades of lack of management from the previous owners along with being lumpy and having some old stumps scattered throughout so we aren't loosing anything. Just a lot of work to bring it back to usable state.