Hello Mr. Fisk. I have another surprise for you.

The Surprise Of The Day for Day 2 was old termite damage. The porch in the back of the house used to be mounted on joist hangers which were nailed directly into the siding. Not exactly ideal, or even standard practice. Part of the project was to take off the old rickety porch and mount a ledger board there, so we can build a proper porch next spring.

The photos yesterday showed some old termite damage to the siding in this area. We knew that there had been termites sometime in the past, because we have the green circular monitoring stations all around the house and we pay someone too much money to come out and check them four times a year. We haven't had any problems since we've been here, and we assumed we'd have to take off this damaged piece of siding and replace it. However, once the crew got the old piece off, he discovered a bunch of wood behind it which was pretty much gone, it would just splinter and crumble if you poked at it. The piece that was most damaged was actually a 1x8 that was just covering the ends of some joists, and not actually serving a structural purpose, and there was a small section of the upstairs wall frame which should be fixed up. I guess he is probably going to take care of this today, he didn't have the materials handy yesterday. No pictures of this since the gaping hole in the wall is temporarily covered with Tyvek.

The rest of the house is progressing. They pulled the siding off the east side of the apartment and replaced it with new plywood. The materials are supposed to arrive today, so we should start to get an idea of the new look real soon now. The apartment roofers plan to work tomorrow.