Trouble in Darlaville

 Trouble here in Darlaville. Home repairs.

Can you see this squirrel hanging on to the door frame here on the screen porch?

He didn't cause the problem but he alerted me to it.

He made his way through the side of the house into the area between the first and second floor.  Not the attic...but between the ceiling downstairs and the floor above.

Puss and I heard him scampering around in there. I went upstairs looking around thinking he had got in up there (down the chimney), but nope.

It turns out that moisture had rotted out an area where the deck attaches to the house...a large enough area for the squirrel to get through.

It was right below the door.

I had a contractor out to see what needed to be done. He said much of the deck would have to be removed to get to the area that needed repair.

Another choice was to get rid of the deck completely, which is what I decided to do.

I think we added the deck in 1997 or 98, so it's nearly 30 years old.

I don't really use the upper deck or the screen porch...other than a place to put my garden tools and other assorted junk.

The screen porch was nice, years ago. Lonnie and I would sit out there in nice weather and he would use his grill in there. When his family and grandkids would come over for a swim and a cookout it was a perfect gathering spot.

Things change.

Anyway, the tear-down guys were working during those horrible 90 something degree days. Just a few hours at a time. It was a hard job...mostly because the deck was covered in a metal roofing material to keep the screen porch dry below.

Rotten.

The beams still looked good but many would have had to be removed anyway to get at the rotten area.

Sort of sad to see it being torn down and of course I kept wondering if I'd made the right decision.

Here is the rotten area. Whew! That's been going on for awhile. I guess that mischievous little squirrel did me a favor by drawing attention to this problem.

Another worry with the old deck was this tree pushing into the side of it.

You can see that big gash in the bark where it had begun growing around the deck floor.

I did ask for a small deck to be built so that upper door wouldn't open into nothingness.

I'll show that next time.