Cold Spaghetti

These are from over a week ago, but are interesting enough to catch up on. My apologizes if I hose up exact details; Paul will fill in the details and post more when he can move his arms off of the floor again.

So, all by himself, while I was off with the kids, Paul took off the back of the house. He then discovered that the termite damage that was found when we had the house inspected (and got $7000 back at closing to fix) was a bit more extensive. The picture above — see the door to the right (the doors to the backyard are interior doors, and no we didn’t install them, hence why they look that way) — anyway, that corner of the house had heavy termite damage. It was fixed before closing. But it wasn’t until the wall was off that one could see how high it went. With the changes going to the back and the importance of the load on that back wall, Paul wanted to get it right. He ended up jacking the house up on that side, splicing out the termite-eaten areas (actually, he said part was completely gone, so it was just evening out the eaten edge) and putting in new pieces. You can see if from inside — stay tuned and I’ll see if we can move some stuff around and get a few pictures. It’s pretty interesting.

Thank goodness our friend Robert answered his cell and had a jack that Paul could use — Robert was a real lifesaver at that moment. I still can’t believe all that Paul did completely by himself. (With me calling every few hours to make sure he was still alive.)

Other interesting pieces… see that foundation pier? Yikes. You can see some of the termite damage in the supporting beam sitting on the pier. See that spigot? Paul installed that after we moved in. This past Saturday morning, he drained the house again and took it off… the last step before starting to frame out the floor!
More dtail to the back. See the hole? Those wood slats are our floors. One has a decent hole in the space between the siding and wallboard. See all the years of debris and bug carcasses? Yikes! We are working very hard not to think about what is in the rest of our 100+ year old walls. (Being perfectionists, this makes us want to re-side the whole house… which would give the bonus step of adding insulation… but the $10,000 or so price tag is a bit unreasonable. Granted, we’ll know better what the real cost is once we’ve bought the hardi for the back of the house. As we begin to buy more materials, we have learned that labor and overhead is SERIOUSLY high.)

Above — evidence of a pipe that once ran out of the back of the house.
And an outlet.
Above: bug shell carcasses. Eewww.
More detail around the right side door (facing house from back yard). Wild!
Above: the nails above were what held the siding on — pounded directly onto the house. (It was aluminum siding.)

Some rough costs and details so far (that I can remember):
— Foundation with piers and flashing: $4000 (This we subbed out — want to have a level foundation! cement had to be wheelbarrowed into the backyard from the street since the space between houses is so narrow.)
— Floorboard lumber: just over $1100. (We used black edge versus pressure treated. At first, Paul was interested in pressure treated (tongue and groove) because of the short distance from the ground. But it came into the yard damaged. The excellent gentleman helping us (Wayne at Kellett Lumber) suggested the black edge. It saved us about a $100 and I was thrilled (no out gassing to worry about).
— Lumber for walls, headers, and ceiling (basically, all the remaining lumber): roughly $2012. All the lumber was delivered Friday morning. Paul missed the school party that morning to carry it all in the backyard (worried it would get lifted off the street). While at the party, friend and fellow parent David heard about Paul’s difficult morning chore, left the party and showed up at our house to help carry wood. Which he happily did all morning, making the job much easier on Paul and bringing on the important elements of fun and friendship to the task. Thanks, Dave!
— Windows, Simonton (4 windows). We looked at Pella (stay away, particularly if in a high-humidity area); cheap aluminum (only because we went to the wrong place); and even Home Depot (don’t bother); to end up with Simonton. I’ll let Paul sing the praises of why we went with them, but if you are in the NOLA area (or another high-humidity, high-wind possible, area… we highly recommend them based on what we’ve learned). More on this once they are actually here and installed. I think they were about $1200 total? Maybe not… I can’t quite remember.
— But the double french exterior door, that was $1400. It wasn’t Simonton, I don’t think. (Sorry, we ordered them two or so weeks ago and I am forgetting some details.)
— Skylights (2): Velux. Can’t remember the price, but like everything else, it was cheaper than we had estimated. Skylights were tricky since the pitch on the roof is going to be slight. Paul and Dad are still hashing out some details on how they are going to frame it out.