Discovery

Let's talk about the process of discovery.

All you lawyers out there can take this one off, it isn't that type of discovery.

We're cruising along. The sun is shining, it's a little warm and we are pulling of siding and trim. Gotta get it off, you know. There is a trim piece that goes between the siding and the skirting. As we move around the house, we might see something like this. 

Nothing too bad here.

 It looks like that most of the way around.Shouldn't be too bad.  Let's take that trim piece off and have a good look.

That looks less comforting.

Okay, so this looks a little worse.  Things are still mostly intact. There's still hope, right?

That rim joist doesn't look too solid.  What happens if we tap it with a hammer?

It's probably only a little surface problem, right? An eighth of an inch back, that's solid wood.

Errr...uh no. Not so much.

I guess we need to cut that wood out and see what's behind door number one Monty.

Serious tools of destruction. Don't laugh at the Harbor Freight.

Can't forget the good, old, hand tools. 

Let's investigate, shall we?

AHHHHH!!! Put it back!  PUT IT BACK!

Yeah, termites.

But not the bad kind.  Okay, so there isn't really a good kind, but not the worst kind.  These guys only really destroy rotten and wet wood.  Get rid of the wet wood and we are fine.

Easy, right?

Riiiiiiggghhhht.

I didn't take as many pictures here as I would like.  Mostly because I was in a life or death battle with a trillion little insects and didn't have time to fiddle around with a camera.  But, it turns out, this joist was right under the kitchen cabinets.

I'd been wondering if we would have to take them out.

Had been.

You see, this is how a simple project, like putting up new siding, changes into something much longer and more involved. Everything we remove seems to reveal more stuff we need to remove.

We kind of knew this going in though.  Oh well, can't be helped.

That's gotta come out.  Time to move some cabinets.

Good thing I have helpers!

Homeschool today is power tool usage in home demolition!

 Just think of the education these kids are getting. 

Again... Everything we take out reveals more work to do.

That can't be sanitary.

Let's just rip it all out.

So, there we are.

The kitchen looks much more open with half the cabinets gone and the sink pulled out.

So that's good. 

I guess there's a downside, but I can't see it yet.

More work tomorrow.

No flood today!

Sometimes it's the little things that make the day.  I didn't flood anything today. 

The work continues unabated. 

The days are becoming remarkably similar. Pull off the rim and band joists and the siding, discover rot, remove said rot, put in new wood. Repeat as necessary.

There has been a lot necessary.

We were progressing along fine and then this showed up.

Rain clouds

Rain? In western Washington?  The hell you say.

Yup. Rain clouds.

But, having been trained in the ancient maritime tradition of reading the weather, we were ready. Or, I read the forecast on the Internet and bought some tarps.

Something like that. 

Actually, since we had almost half of the house covered with sheathing, we decided to add the water resistant barrier of our choice, #30 asphalt felt. This covered the windows and gaps and protected everything we could cover from all but the most torrential of downpours.

It ain't winter yet. A few passing showers was all we had today.

Pay no mind to the unlevel nature of the felt.

It's harder than it looks if you are under nine feet tall

We decided to forego having windows on any part of the house

 Sarah and I wrestled with that roll of heavy asphalt paper for most of the day. I would curse its weight and Sarah cursed the stapler. She had trouble, initially anyway,  getting the staples in flush. I would hear the bang of the stapler impacting the house followed by the tap, tap, tap, of her shame as she had to pound them the rest of the way in with her special tool.  She got into the groove after a while though and we made decent time. No, no... Let's not talk about my crooked paper or my tap, tap, taps of shame... Let's focus on Sarah here.  

Look, kids on lawn tractors! 

Michael has been working. A little every day.

Max is too small to reach the pedal without tripping the seat safety. He just got to drive it.

Back to work tomorrow.  Back to only a few, short hours to work on the house each day.


Back at it full time this weekend.

On the plus side, one of our neighbors gave us some of his old tools.  I don't know how much use I'll get out of them, but we will see.

I shall name you Kickback Death

You shall be called Finger Eater.

Everyone, meet Electric Death.

Don't worry, I'll read the manuals.

I also discovered that, at night, one of the garage windows look straight out of a horror movie.

Just imagine the clown on the other side!

 Sweet dreams!