Home Ownership with all it's suckitude

A while ago, we noticed the basement seemed a little more damp than usual. Then, water stains started appearing on the baseboards in my office. This is one of those things you just don't want to know. If you investigate, you know it's going to cost some mucho dinero. Finally, though, we felt we had to get to the bottom of it.

In my office is a gorgeous wood shelf that was placed inside an alcove. Well, there WAS a shelf. I had to rip it out piece by piece since that seemed to be the focal point of the water stains. Once that was done, we had someone stop by to give us an estimate. After looking at my demolition work, he thought there might not be a crack in the foundation at all, it might be coming over the top of the wall somehow. Oh how I hoepd he was right. Alas, no. Today's rains showed water emanating from a hole in the middle of the wall. One leak found.

While looking outside, I noticed another crack in the foundation that seemed significant. Its location could not be worse. 1 foot to the left and it's in the unfinished basement. 1 foot to the right and it's accessible by a drop ceiling. Unfortunately, it's right where our ceiling had to be built around an I-Beam. So, more demolition for me as soon as I figure out how to put the computers somewhere functional. I'm not going to live without my computers damnit!

Decorating Advice

I have a question for the more decor inclined of my readers. As you may know, we recently replaced all the windows in our house. For almost all the windows, we ordered new blinds which will be installed tomorrow. The question I have regards the 2 large windows in the Living Room/Dining Room. Our plan is to decorate these with draperies to accent the room. The curtain rod we have in mind has a large orb shaped object on the end. We felt given the scale of the room (i,e, vaulted ceilings), we wanted something that wouldn't be lost. However, this presents a little decorating problem. The LR window is fine, but the DR window has 1 side with only 5 inches of clearance between it and the wall. You can see a picture of that here. So that leaves me with what I think are 2 choices: have matching curtain rod ends, but remove it from the end against the wall or use a plain rod for the dining room. Would having 1 side with nothing on it seem odd to many out there? What about 2 different rod sets? Thoughts would be greatly appreciated here.