Month: July 2016

So…now that we found termite damage we needed to figure out the extent. We were blessed with lots of friends and family who wanted to help so we had a work party weekend and started a layer by layer removal of damaged areas in our living room/dining room.

Now that you’ve seen the pictures the recap is that we found termite damage in all areas: the subfloor, the studs and the header. The subfloor is composed of two layers in our house; a layer of 1x6s and a layer of plywood above. At the end of the termite demo weekend we had stripped the walls down to the studs and the floor down to the 1x6s (which sit on top of the floor joists).  The good news is that we didn’t find any active termites! The bad news is that this has become a MUCH bigger process so we needed to stop and regroup. 

Shortly after we moved in I went to Wisconsin for my friends Bachelorette party and Steve had his Dad and some friends over to come help the renovations.  We have a living room/dining room combination in the front of the house and we were going to start there. Here was the plan:

1. Rip out laminate floors 

2. Install hardwood floors (side note: the day after we moved in Steve picked up the solid hardwood floors for the whole house, three truckloads and 5000 pounds of wood, all in one of our guest bedrooms)

3. Install baseboards

4. Move on to next room 

We found some very 1950s Terrazo tile in the foyer (fun fact: the crystal parts glow when you shine a light on them) as well as termite damage behind the baseboards along the west wall of the house.  We hadn’t been informed of any history of termites or termite damage so we were surprised and started further investigation.

Steve and I bought our first house on June 28, 2016 in the northern suburbs of Dallas, Texas. We had a long and frustrating search and were excited to make our home our own.

 We had plans from an interior designer to redo our kitchen and had picked out solid hardwood flooring for the home as the first phase of our planned updates.

 Unfortunately things didn’t go quite as planned… so come along and journey with us as we build our home!