Renovation Nightmares

Have you seen those renovation shows where unsuspecting home owners start what they expect will be a "simple" home renovation only to uncover problem after problem?  My husband and I love to watch Renovation Realities on the DIY network.  We find all the drama quite entertaining.  But we've discovered its not quite so funny when it happens to you.  Welcome to our nightmare.

Three weeks ago we woke up early on a rainy Saturday morning.  I was all set to run my first 10K race.  As the race began the skies cleared and it was a beautiful morning.  I had a great run and couldn't wait to go home and take a nap!

My girls ran through the finish line with me.  :)

When we got home my husband recruited my help with a "little" demolition project.  You see, we have a sun room and covered porch that were added to the back of the house about 10-12 years ago.  The sun room had sweet fake wood paneling, styrofoam ceiling tiles, and peel and stick linoleum tiles on the floor.  In the six years we've owned the home this add-on has been home to our parrots.  But over the years we've expanded to a family of five and the kids just keep growing.  We need more space.  Sorry birds, this is your eviction notice.

The original plan for the day was to tear out the paneling and ceiling tiles so we would be ready to drywall at a later date. Then take a nap.

Ha.

Here's what we uncovered.

Termite damage. Horrible, horrible termite damage. How was the wall still standing?

Plan B. Add wall insulation to the demo list. Oh yeah, and discover roof problems. Forget about that nap.

It turns out our roof was incorrectly done. The sun room and covered porch roof doesn't have much slope to it and when the builder (shady contractor? Or well-meaning friend with no clue?) attached a gutter along the edge the gutter pushed up on the shingles allowing water to pool under the shingles on the (too thin) plywood. The plywood was rotten and had to be replaced along the entire edge.

Wait, there's more.

After discovering the water damage on the roof we opened up the ceiling to check for more water damage. What we found was soaking wet insulation. There was not a single vent in the entire ceiling as there should have been.

Plan C. Gut everything. Spend every spare moment working on repairs for next three weeks. Go to Lowes so many times you make friends with the employees. Consider taking a second part-time job at Lowes to finance the repairs.  

I'll end today's post with this picture of the progress we made on day two.  More posts coming soon!