His and Her Home Repair Saga, Day 4

His and Her Home Repair Saga, Day 1
His and Her Home Repair Saga, Day 2
His and Her Home Repair Saga, Day 3 

Yesterday was an intense day. I think that is going to be my word for it. As I was texting family and friends some updates during the day, I found myself using words like "scary" and "unfair" a lot. Here's a recap of day 4...

-The guys started early by removing what was left of the brick on the outside.

-They then took out the concrete where they will need to build the new footer.

-Then they started to take out the door. 

Bye, bye door!

Bye, bye frame!

-This is where it got intense. While taking out the door, they found more water damage then expected, some surface mold, and a 3/4 inch difference between the left side of the door and the right side. 

Lots of water damage on the left side.

Lots of wood rot on the right side.

The mold is on the side of the wall...the rest is water damage.

-The insulation underneath the door was not done correctly - they only put in about half the amount that they should have.

-There were rat droppings --- but no rats! Praise for that! (Our neighbor said that they found rats in her house a few years ago and put down poison. She never heard anything else about it. We think that's connected to our issues.)

Have I ever told you guys how much I hate rats?!?!

-They built a new girder, replaced the subfloor, and then did the part that had me the most terrified. The jacked the right side of the door jam (the part about 2 feet away from our brick fireplace) up so that it was level with the other side. I could hear some cracking and popping from the walls while they jacked. I was a nervous wreck! We do have some small cracks, but nothing major. Thank the Lord!

The jack was much smaller than I thought it would be.

-They reframed the opening for the new, smaller sliding glass door. Then boarded the place up until today's work begins.

We went with a 6 foot door instead of 8 feet like we had, so this is going to get dry walled and sealed shut.

All boarded up for the night. The door gets put in tomorrow.

Here's the exterior view of the work from yesterday.

This one is holding up the left side.

This is holding up the right side.

Still a lot to do but a lot of progress has been made.

Rats + water + mold = chaos! Not the workers, they were fine, but chaos for me. I paced, baked, questioned, watched, photographed, and paced some more. It was more damage than they were expecting, but it is fixed. The rotten wood has been replaced and the new door gets put in tomorrow. I am optimistically going to say that the worst is behind us.


Since this will go up while they are working on the house again, maybe you all could help distract me. What are your fun weekend plans? Tell me all about it so I can focus on you guys instead of the work.


Happy Friday,