Scary Cabin

OK, maybe not killer ants but they were big! While cleaning up in the utility room we spotted a few carpenter ants and with further inspection, we found a few more. This isn’t the first time (or even the second time) that we’ve found carpenter ants so we’re somewhat prepared for them. The first time was right at the start of this project when we opened up the wall around around the tub. The tub surround had been leaking for years and the ants loved it. The second time was when we opened up the wall upstairs above the bathroom. It looked like the old window there had been leaking a bit and thus, some of the survivors from below had found a new home. The latest incident has them in the same general area between the two floors but next to the bathroom. Looks like the caulking on the flashing on the roof of the utility room had failed and possibly some water was getting in there. It’s been freshly caulked and the ants have been sprayed so we expect to find a pile of dead ants when we get back up there. We cut out some of the utility room ceiling to get a better look at what was happening and found that the insulation up there has pretty much turned to dust. So we’ll be pulling the entire ceiling along with the walls when we start working on that room.

Another interesting note, the ceiling joist for the utility room are real 2×8’s, not dimensional 2×8 that are really 1 1/2” x 7 1/2”, but rough cut 2” x 8” boards. They had to cut them down on the ends to fit in the joist hangers.

When we weren’t battling ants, we were working on the upstairs. We finished up installing flooring in the area under eaves behind the kneewalls. It looks more finished, even without the kneewalls built. We also installed a lot of window and door casing. All the casings are installed now. But there still some filling, painting and calking to get them looking nice. The non-flat walls made it challenging to get the casing to lay flat to the door/window frames. But when it’s all done and painted it should look pretty good. Many of the doors are too close to walls so that a full piece of casing is too wide. In fact, I think there were only 6 out of 14 that didn’t need to be trimmed. Some of the walls were so far out that we needed to cut some of the drywall out of the way to make the casing lay flat.

When I can summarize the work we did over the weekend in a couple of sentences, it seems like we didn’t get much done. It’s hard to convey how much work is involved sometimes. When dealing with this finish type work, I don’t trust that I can get things cut to the right size in one go, so I almost always cut big, take the piece to the location where it will go, mark, cut again, check and sometimes there’s a third or fourth cut before it’s right.