Erik in AK
New member
After reading Hunterman's post I thought "What the hell"
Some background:
I bought my house in '93 as an estate sale. It was a rental at the time and run down but sound as far as I could tell. I got it cheap and "bought" 20K in equity at closing. The AF moved me in '98 and we rented it out in order to keep it. I retired last year and we moved back in last spring. The house came with a flat roof over the garage which I always hated. Not so much for the looks but for the worry that water would get into the walls. It did.
I decided to get rid of the ugly, banged up aluminum and reside along with putting a pitched roof over the garage and installing a new front door. My neighbor is a cedar dealer and he cut me a little discount so last year I bought the new siding and was waiting for this summer to dive in to it. Well sometimes home rennovation is like peeling an onion and as each layer came off rennovation turned into repair. I knew I had water damage in my garage roof eaves but was not too concerned since that was getting replaced. As I started removing the siding off the back of the house I found rot....lots of it.:BLEEP: The sheathing was black and crumbly. The sill and wall base plates were mush and most of the studs were bad where they contacted the base plate. I ended up jacking up the house and replacing 20 feet of wall before I could even begin working on the garage roof. After sledgehammering the old front step (which had heaved) I discovered sill/base plate rot under the front door. That required lag-bolting a 2x12 across the front of the house to form a temporary header (so the wall wouldn't droop when I took out the old sill).
Except for some help getting the trusses up onto the garage roof and setting the gable end, and squaring the new door I did all of it by myself. The original plan of new siding begins in two weeks when I get home from work.
Next month I start building the new back deck...the wife says I can buy a nail gun for that job
Some background:
I bought my house in '93 as an estate sale. It was a rental at the time and run down but sound as far as I could tell. I got it cheap and "bought" 20K in equity at closing. The AF moved me in '98 and we rented it out in order to keep it. I retired last year and we moved back in last spring. The house came with a flat roof over the garage which I always hated. Not so much for the looks but for the worry that water would get into the walls. It did.
I decided to get rid of the ugly, banged up aluminum and reside along with putting a pitched roof over the garage and installing a new front door. My neighbor is a cedar dealer and he cut me a little discount so last year I bought the new siding and was waiting for this summer to dive in to it. Well sometimes home rennovation is like peeling an onion and as each layer came off rennovation turned into repair. I knew I had water damage in my garage roof eaves but was not too concerned since that was getting replaced. As I started removing the siding off the back of the house I found rot....lots of it.:BLEEP: The sheathing was black and crumbly. The sill and wall base plates were mush and most of the studs were bad where they contacted the base plate. I ended up jacking up the house and replacing 20 feet of wall before I could even begin working on the garage roof. After sledgehammering the old front step (which had heaved) I discovered sill/base plate rot under the front door. That required lag-bolting a 2x12 across the front of the house to form a temporary header (so the wall wouldn't droop when I took out the old sill).
Except for some help getting the trusses up onto the garage roof and setting the gable end, and squaring the new door I did all of it by myself. The original plan of new siding begins in two weeks when I get home from work.
Next month I start building the new back deck...the wife says I can buy a nail gun for that job
