On to the Outside– Renovation Demo Part 3- The Exterior

If you have been following along with our little (BIG) renovation project on the cutest brick cottage, then you have seen the huge project we got ourselves into.  I was asked yesterday if we expected to have all the surprises and all the work that goes along with a project of this magnitude.  Well in a nutshell YES!  We knew the house had great bones but had been left neglected for far too long.  When you have a college rental house, things often go without repair or the renters don’t even notice that something needs repairing.   A leaky pipe or roof leak left poorly patched is a recipe for disaster.  Water is one of the single biggest culprits of damage to houses.  Fix those leaks now folks before it gets out of control.  Water had definitely taken its toll on this little house.  The inside had lots of damaged subfloor, old roof leaks in the ceiling and damage to the walls (peeling plaster everywhere).  The exterior was no different and actually had a greater amount of damage that couldn’t be seen until we dug a little deeper.  We really weren’t expecting this much damage but not much surprises us these days with old houses.  Before we did any exterior demo, we dug out where the addition would go. 

We hit rock in the Georgia clay and lots of it.  The little bulldozer had to do a little extra work to get the hole deep enough.

My son is amazed by all things BIG EQUIPMENT and this was no exception.  He could have sat right there all day and watched them dig the big hole.

They are like magnets to the dirt!  Haha!

Next up the footings and piers are poured.  The addition will be on crawl space just like the rest of the house.

And then the demo of the back of the house starts.  Can anyone else see that the back door is leaning?  We noticed it when we first looked at the house but didn’t know what the reason was for the damage.

Well there it is!  The whole back side of this section of the house was rotted out.  Really really dangerous and a scary find!  Yep that is going to have to be fixed and fixed fast!  We removed all the damaged wood and replaced the whole floor joists that were damaged.  Whew!  Years and years of water getting in there caused a huge mess under the door.  Lucky we caught it and could fix it.

Here’s a closer look.  See the door was leaning and it wasn’t just my imagination!  The whole doorframe and subfloor around the area were badly damaged.  Crazy Old Houses!!

We also found this on the left side of the back of the house.  It was an old coal chute that was used to slide coal down to the basement area to run the furnace.  How cool is that?  When we poked around, old soot still fell off around the hole.  I just love old houses.

As we started taking the brick off the back of the house for the addition we found this under the eaves of the roof under the fascia board.  Lots of squirrels and chipmunks have called this house home for a long time.  I for one don’t want to live with wildlife!

I think they really liked the old insulation!  Yuck!  Time to evict the critters!

And last but not least.  We removed the magnolia tree that was blocking the house.  We will have lines running right where it was and are doing a nice parking pad there so the tree had to go.  We like to joke that we don’t buy a house unless it has a big magnolia tree in the front yard.  Haha!  The first house had 2 huge magnolias!   I hope you enjoy following our process!  Stick around for more info on renovation #2!