Making Progress And A Big Mess

Replacing Foundation Baseboard

Repairing Inside of Exterior Wall

It's been a few days since my last post simply because almost every waking minute has been spent at the tiny house working. I have white paint everywhere including my hair and eyeballs. But we have made significant progress, thank goodness. The week didn't start out good. One of our workers came down with  a bug that put him out of commission for the week. Another was unavailable on Monday and sick on Wednesday. Fortunately, we found someone who is good at carpentry, willing to do any kind of work, and was available. It set us back a bit but not as much as it could have.

I think I left it last time with a hole in the floor caused by water leaking in through improperly installed duct work. When we got into it we found a good amount of damage to the floor and wall. Actually, the base board that rests on the foundation was rotted in that spot. So that had to be cut out back to good wood so it could be replaced.

This is the mess we uncovered when we started investigating the buckled panelling below the cold air return. The black area below the lower left corner of the return is building paper exposed when the rotten wood was pulled away.                                                                                            

The soaked wood had to be dried out and we treated it and the replacement peices with a Borate spray.

 The new wood is the replaced piece that rests on the foundation and we used a piece of oak plank from the wall we took out to replace the outside wall board that was rotten. Once that was in place the rest of the area was framed in and reinforced. Getting the frame work in place was a bit of a problem. It was a very awkward area to reach. So Don, our worker and friend, after trying several different ways of doing this finally decided this was the only way.

We have often been grateful for Don's help, but, I think this goes above and beyond what most would do on a job. There just is no way I could do this.

I was uncomfortable just looking at him down there..

Blindly reaching for a screw because he couldn't sit up far enough to see where they were.

And done!! Poor guy. He was definately relieved to get out of there.

None of this damage would have happened if the installers of this outside furnace and a/c unit had done it properly. Like I said before, I don't know if  laziness or greed or stupidity was the cause of this screwed up mess but, off hand, I'd rule out stupidity. They'd have to be really profoundly dumb not to notice that the vent was sloped toward the house instead of away. Even stupid people know that water runs down hill. Or that duct tape isn't waterproof. That leaves lazy or greedy. Or, probably, both.