A couple of Saturday's ago my Dad and I were talking over breakfast about what to do at the house that day. I mean, there's just nothing to do :)
Anyway, the stairs are REALLY squeaky. I mean typical old house squeaky, and then some. It was part of the water damage from the roof.
The hardwood specialist that came over to look at the floors said that he might be able to fix them. But first, we have to take off the drywall under the stairs so that they can be accessed from the basement stairs and repaired. I don't have a super great picture, but this is the door leading to the basement/basement stairs.
So here we are, fast forward to about 1 p.m. and we are ripping out everything.
I mean we are really going for the open concept thing now :) If you blow up the first picture you can see the lovely stud all the way over to the right, it looks super structurally sound! Glad we uncovered it.
So here we are in a pile of dust, drywall, and lord knows what else. And bless my curious heart, I start begging my poor Dad to uncover what used to be the old door from the basement to the outside. He finally gave in. I stand there like a kid in a candy store. I had been hoping to find something cool all day. This was my last hope. Dumb, dumb, dumb. I don't know if I would label it "cool", but we can say interesting.
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| outside where the old basement door used to be |
My Dad takes off the drywall and carries it out. I start looking at the studs and insulation. I see a weed growing in the wall (there is just plywood on the bottom of the outside where the siding doesn't cover it). A weed. Great. I dig look down at the bottom again, another (dead) weed, so I grab it. Not. A. Dead. Weed.
Screams ensue and gloves go flying off as I run up the stairs and past my understandably confused father who is returning from throwing away the drywall. Then I start jumping up and down and dry heaving like the drama queen I am.
My Dad looks at me like I'm crazy and I scream "Rats!" He calls me crazy. He walks down the stairs and says, "That's not a rat!"
Excuse me. I may be a girly girl, but I know a rat when I see one, albeit mummified. He gets closer.
"Oh, it is a rat...there's two!"
Thank you, Sherlock. That may be why I used the plural form.
Within seconds he has named them Fred and Ethel. Leave it to my Dad to name two mummified rats right off the bat. After a 1950's sitcom.
I'm going to warn you that if you don't want to see two mummified rats, STOP scrolling! Though, it may be too late. Sorry.
My Dad got the shovel and put them out on the front porch. Lovely.
It was a little sad. They were facing each other in the wall...like a married couple that wouldn't leave each other. Titanic anyone? The Notebook? Leave it to me to think of a romance from two dead rats in a wall. Of course.
Anyway, I got new gloves, because of course mummified rats carry diseases. I really just couldn't put those things back on. But thank God I had them on...a lot of times I refuse to put them on because the stink, which they really, really do.
And we moved on. We finished that part and then Leo finished the soccer tournament he was at and came over to help my Dad replace a couple of beams that had long ago been eaten on like a buffet by termites. We could tell it was long ago because they had already put another beam next to it to be the support, and you could tell it was aged. But my Dad likes to be thorough. We took the eaten beam off and put another new beam up against the the one they had put there already. It was pretty bad, it just fell apart. We already replaced parts of the floor in the bathroom and kitchen that were rotted from plumbing issues.
He is being such a trooper! I'm so glad I found someone that will support my dreams, even if it isn't exactly what he was thinking when he bought his first house. But I think he will see the light when we are finished :)
-Katie
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