Desert Musings, Fever Dreams, and Demo

When I was thirteen, I was riding my bike in the desert outside of Reno, Nevada. (This was before the sprawl that turned that wonderful desert into oh so many tract homes.) I was enjoying myself to the utmost, my hair blowing back, alone in the hills except for the lizards, snoozing animals, and tough, little plants. Life is glorious in the desert!

As I rode on the narrow trail, I spied a coffee can thrown next to some brush on my left. I braked with a spray of gravel and a plume of dust. My mind raced with thoughts of found treasure. Was this my doorway to wealth?

I picked up the can, hot to the touch because of its exposure to the summer sun, and opened the lid with anticipation -- only to be assaulted with the smell of rot and the vision of a dead parakeet.

Gross!

This experience seems to be replaying itself as we delve further into the situation with my office. The difficulty of taking the sliding glass door out is intimidating to say the least. My Charles has begun to take out the decking so that he can see what it looks like below the door frame. What he found does not look good. Mold against the house, eating into the siding along with the dry rot.

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All planks shown have been unscrewed

And then, of course, it had to get more complicated. The deck is actually attached to the siding, so some of the supports have to be removed in order to replace the siding. Even more fun was found underneath the supports where it was discovered that the original siding wasn't even painted or sealed where the deck connected to the house. Fantastic.

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I love my desk

I've been feeling bad, too, because I was sick with the flu earlier this week -- high fever and hallucinations to boot. While I'm feeling better physically, I still tire easily, so I haven't been able to help my Charles with any of this work. To make myself feel a little better, like at least I was doing something constructive, I rubbed teak oil into my desk since it occasionally has to spend some time on the deck. I think it turned out really pretty.

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Literally. A hornet's nest.

Oh well, when it comes to DIYing, at least I was forewarned. I read so many home blogs, I knew that any major redo takes twice as much time and money  than you originally think. Somehow though, that knowledge isn't exactly helping me out as we open up cans of dead parakeets and hornets nests alike. But we shall prevail! I promise you, and myself, that we shall. We just have to get through the rough spots, and sometime down the line, I'll have glorious after pictures to share with you. It's just, ahem, taking more time and money than we originally anticipated.

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1/3 of the screws my Charles removed yesterday