Lazy, hazy days of summer?

Actually, a lot has been going on! For one, the past few weeks, I've been working to finish a pretty major repair to the house that Andrew, Neil and I did. Due to a couple of factors, one of my exterior walls pretty much had rotted to nothing. July 4th I decided to do some excavation and see if the damage was more extensive than just siding. Um, yeah, just a little bit! We ended up having to demolish about a four foot wide by 10 foot high section of exterior wall down to the interior sheetrock. We had to replace structure from bottom to top. Luckily the sill plate was still intact on the foundation and the floor joists had not completely rotted away. We were able to sister 2x10's to the existing joists without having to jack up the structure. That was a pretty big "whew" moment there! Next we had to replace the actual sill and sub-floor construction along about a 5 foot section, allowing us to replace three wall studs to a height of about 10 feet. We actually got the insulation and sheathing on in one complete day! All that was left for me to do by myself was to install the siding and replace the trim, caulk and paint. I finished painting the wall and just have the trim to left to paint.

What caused this? You know how they say that water is your house's biggest enemy? Well, they're right. First, the flashing was installed incorrectly on the foyer addition. The flashing along the roof-wall join ended about 2 inches above the gutter. This caused water that flowed down this area to seep between the roof eaves on the front of the house and the foyer wall. Secondly, the idiot who lived in the house before me neglected the shit out of the house. According to my neighbor, he can't remember the previous owner ever cleaning the gutters! I guess you never know what you're going to get when you buy a foreclosure!

I have pictures of the process that I'll post as soon as I get them off the camera.

Also! Take a look at the link underneath my picture over there -> . Occasionally I'll update what I'm doing on Twitter. I think it's a pretty cool little application! Why don't you try it out?