Cousin Leo

Category: termites

  • Day 9 – The second Saturday

    We had hoped we’d be moving in on this day.
    HAAAAAAA HA HA HA HA HA!

    Choosing not to dwell on the nagging feeling that we will never actually live in the house that we are paying a mortgage on, we trudged onward.

    Marc decided to rip out all exterior-wall sheetrock to check for termite damage and since he was doing that we decided to add insulation. Sadly that meant removing the sheetrock that had been installed earlier in the week, but, in the long run it was a good call. The first task was to replace any boards that were severely eaten. Finally a bit of luck falls our way – the only boards that needed to be removed were about 40% of the bottom plates in that room. (See how well I’m not dwelling? Me = bright side)

    2014-09-20 18.25.40

    While he was busy making sure that our walls didn’t fall down, mom and I cleaned and re-caulked the shower and tub. I may actually allow myself and my family to use it now.

    before-after-tub

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  • Day 5-6

    Unable to recover from the site of the bugs.
    We took a break from Leo while we waited for the treatment estimate.

  • Day 4

    Day 4 was the Monday after closing. Marc and I worked at our day-jobs at mom’s house, where she has so graciously allowed us to live while we tear apart and rebuild the house we just bought. We headed over to the house to work into the night.

    I focused on finishing Harrison’s room… which meant learning how to cut and install the new baseboards.

    2014-09-15-19-09-37-2
    Caulk’ll fix that.

    And now that the stink room had been Kilzed it was time to cover that back up. We were so lucky to have fellow-new-old-home-buyer, Johnny, over to help with the sheetrock through a reciprocal work program. (Seriously, we are so lucky to have talented and willing friends and family to help us – it could not be done with our sanity intact without them.) Now, because we were eager to get moved in and because the rest of the exterior walls were not insulated we figured, why start now? Let’s just get this thing done!

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    This of course was not the end of the story.
    There was a spot above the 4 foot mark that had been cracked and ripped when Marc took the bottom portion out. That needed to be cut out another 2 feet up. And the removal of that piece of course revealed more surprises. Hundreds of creepy crawly surprises.

    2014-09-15-22-19-52

    Our inspection on the house warned of termite evidence, but, we were told that there was no signs of bugs currently in the house.
    The inspector, unfortunately was wrong.

    And so ended our night.

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