We knew when we bought the house that we had dry rot issues to address. Even through the fresh (but badly done) paint job the POs had slapped up onto the house, you could see where things were starting to fray. We had enough on our plate immediately after moving in that we didn’t get to address the problems last summer, so this summer it was high on my list of things to sort out.
Step one was documenting the current conditions. Some highlights:
First we have the pergola outside the studio building (pic 1). The previous owners, not known for their attention to detail, chose not to pay for a proper paint job when they got the place ready to sell. As a result, the tops of the beams of the pergolas and front arbor were not painted and, in addition, the joints were never sealed.
There was also the french doors leading to the studio building from the breezeway between it and the main house (second and third pics). Note the condition of the bottom of the door frame. It began to rot out because the previous owners, in their infinite wisdom, thought a wooden door frame was a good idea on the exterior of a building. Why we even have these doors is a mystery of missing logic, as there is a single windowed door (complete with storm door, in fact) not 12 feet away, and four feet to the right of that door is a sliding glass door. To add to the door insanity, there’s another sliding glass door just around the corner opening out to the sports court. That means there are four separate entrances to this building, used for five things when the previous owners lived here: their pool table, their video games, storing the incredibly fantastical amount of clothing the wife owned, and storing their wine and books. The mind just boggles at the number of entrances/exits.
But I digress. Back to the issue at hand: various bits of this building and the house are slowly rotting away. Last shot is the arbor section above the pool equipment. As you can see, lots of rot showing under the quickie paint job.
Then there is the massive pergola outside the great room. First shot below is the front of the house, which is really kind of the back of the house. While it does have a “front door,” the house doesn’t really have the whole “yard” thing in the front, since we don’t really have a yard; we have giant pastures instead. As you can see in the detail shots, the rot was pretty extensive–the black marks on the pillar are actually gaffer’s tape to cover large holes made by the rot. And oh look, a beam eaten through by rot.
Here’s a close up of the bits we taped over last winter to keep water out as best we could (fourth pic).
And to think most of this damage was totally avoidable. If the previous owners had kept up with things and actually taken the time to inspect areas of the house regularly, the rot would never have gotten so bad. They were apparently totally unwilling to spend money on their home, but perfectly happy to spend money on clothing and jewelry of questionable taste. Different people have different needs I guess, and we really shouldn’t be too mean as they migrated to Wisconsin this fall–proving themselves the epitome of the term “helicopter parents,” they followed their only child when she went off to college.
Thankfully, we found the house and bought it and can now take care of issues like in the final pic–the southeast corner of the great room. This bit pokes out about four feet from the main line of the south wing, and slow settling over the last 50 years, coupled with slipshod care, mean a nasty hole of rot. Thankfully all these issues, while not fixed forever, are being addressed, but more on that in the next post.
