Dry Rot!

My Charles and I had a little bit of time a couple of evenings ago and ripped out all of the carpeting from my office. It's really too easy to rip out carpeting. Maybe this is why everyone is so keen on the cleaner look of wood flooring -- there's something ever so satisfying in tearing out old, stinky, dirty carpet. We were organized and rolled the carpet as we took it out. We weren't so organized once it got to the padding.

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Yesterday we had an entire day off where we hadn't committed to anything else, so we spent it by traveling down to Sacramento to get some flooring, stopping off at the hardware store to get some wonderfully collapsible saw horses, and then being motivated to GET THIS PARTY STARTED.

Crowbar, check!  Hammer, check! Lots of frustration to take out on a subfloor, super check!

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Look at this super-nastiness! We're actually going to trim some of this, as it's still sound, to reuse. This will save us a little bit of money and it will help because there's an odd alcove in my office that makes it just a wee bit longer than one of these pieces.

Now we come to the good news/bad news part of the demo. The good news is that we discovered that the trim may not have been completely at fault. This is great as it means that there hopefully isn't more of this mess hiding somewhere else on the deck-side of the house. The bad news is that we discovered that the leak is coming from the sliding glass door.

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We don't have enough money right now to replace the sliding glass door. What's more, this is an OLD door, and I couldn't even find instructions on the internet that explained how to remove the door, fix the wooden support frame, and then replace it. All of the instructions involved destroying the door frame in order to remove it. Obviously, this will not work. Plus, no matter how we tried, the frame would not budge. At least part of it had been installed correctly!

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This is something else we have discovered as we've worked on my office -- there was a lot of jenky stuff done to this space. My theory is that the original homeowners only used this house as a summer home, so they didn't care that there were some bazaar installations. They were only here a couple of months a year, after all. For example, not only is there no flashing under that door, I also discovered random scraps of wood inside the wall when I was tearing out the damaged sheet rock.

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More moldy drywall to deal with.

And then there were the rusted nails all along the external wall that were just sitting on the plywood. They were just dropped and left, so when the water invaded, the random nails rusted where they lay.

But since we've found this new issue, we also have to replace the plywood. I'm hoping when we tear out the plywood and expose the floor joists, we'll see an opportunity to replace the bottom of the jam and install some flashing without destroying the door. Oh, and one more jenky thing -- they built this whole house with nails. I'm almost sure of it. I haven't found a screw anywhere inside the house -- at least where it's still the original construction. They even nailed down the plywood. No wonder the floor's always squeaked in my office!

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It's just a flesh wound!

I also received my first construction injury. I left the office to grab the ladder, came back in, and whammo! My left eye started to tear up. I thought I had just gotten a piece of dust in my eye, but when I looked into the mirror later that day, I discovered a scabby little flesh wound. I'm not quite sure how it happened, but there it is. I also happen to be incredibly allergic to mold, so today my lungs burn, my windpipe itches, and I feel like I'm hanging out in a pea soup fog, so I guess I got a couple of injuries yesterday. Oh the sacrifices for a nice home!

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It's actually redder than this.

There is a light at the end of the tunnel -- I really like the floor we purchased. It's laminate, but that's all we can afford right now, and since I paint in that space, maybe laminate's a better idea anyway. I hate using drop cloths when I'm focused on a painting. My klutziness takes over, and I trip into my easel. This has happened more than once, so I don't use them anymore.

Anyhoo... maybe something to look forward to? I guess we'll have to see how replacing the frame under the door goes. My hopes were to replace the sliding door with French doors eventually, but unless I find a kick-ass deal on craigslist in the near future, I don't see that happening this year. We'll see how the next lap in the floor replacement goes. I'll keep ya posted.

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