It was a Dark and Stormy Night...

While Ginger oversees the demolition from above, the downstairs bathroom is completely gutted...after many unsuccess attempts to patch parts of it (I should know better by now!) ...
I finally had to enlist some professional help (no not a psychologist, but that may not be such a bad idea!). I'm glad I did; Gary made framing out the kitchen look easy in a few hours!



Down in the cellar we found at least three more places where beams had been rotted or eaten out by insects...and repaired by some yahoo using bite-sized pieces of wood and a nail gun. These were replaced with double 2x8 studs...we can now put in heavy things like a refrigerator and a bathtub.

Well, we need to start on the bathroom but at $25.00 an hour, we'll see how far this goes.!

D

Always Sumthin!

This week, I installed the new front door; (never an easy task in an unplumb old house)...the house no longer looks like a bar & grill!! What color do you suggest we paint the new door?

Another Good Samaritan is the maintenance guy at work, Gary Harris. Gary came over during the week and together we removed a 400 pound cast iron 50's era bathtub from the downstairs bathroom as well as the old water heater and carried them to the scrapyard...at least we received enough cash for lunch! Here is Gary sitting in the truck with the "load" in the back...on the way to the scrapyard.
OK, that's the good news...but now, the rest of the story:

Gary pulled down some sheetrock in the basement (my mother made me say "basement" but...despite it being Mother's Day...the downstairs is a "cellar." Underneath, we found the tackiest repair job you have ever seen...and carefully covered over with joint compound.

We'll spend several days...once again...jacking up ceilings and replacing yet more termite damage...the right way.


Then on Thursday I noticed that my pulse was acting kind of strange and went to the doctor on Friday. Apparently, my heart has returned to the Atrial Fibrillation problem of a few years ago and I am on anti-arrhythmic medicine (you didn't think I could spell that, didn't you?).

So, things are certainly not going as planned but that's to be expected in our imperfect world...




"Man, who is born of a woman is short of days, and full of trouble."
Job 14:1, The Bible............................................................................

Ain't it da truth?

Happy Mother's Day and Til next time, D.

Everything you've always wanted to know about Termites

We knew that there was some termite damage here and there...but when you deal with old houses, things are always worse then they seem and when you start addressing one problem, you find another and another and so on.

The Parlor Right floor was a little "bouncy" near the fireplace but no damage was visible except in the far right corner of the photo below. Because the furnace with its octopus of ducts was directly below, I had to fix the problem from the top which meant removing floorboards.

Termites are attracted by moisture and I suspect that the moisture came from bad sheathing on the fireplace chimney...around the hearth, all of the beams were damaged or destroyed.



Now this is a piece from one of those beams...the termites had gone right through the grain and eaten the best part. We'll have this framed and call it "Termite Art."


I tried to pull up about one third of the "swamp pine" floorboards with a crowbar but since they were tongue and groove, it required that a circular saw be run along the groove to cut off the tongue. The saw is old and the depth kept changing...making matters more difficult.

I removed all the damaged splinters and framed around the hearth with 2x8 pressure treated lumber... using a bottle jack, by the way, below the hearth, just in case that the concrete might want to crack.

Each damage beam was "sistered" with the same 2x8 lumber and bolted in place with large bolts, washers and nuts.
The floorboards were replaced, best that I could...some had split but these will be covered with new flooring anyway. The bad news is that I have found damage even on the second floor but everything seems solid up there. I suspect that the front porch deck is a goner too.

The place is sure a mess...the lesson to be learned is to do one task at a time...not three or four but us ADD guys just don't know any better.

More next time....

D