Why I love dryrot…
Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008Because without it, I might not have a good reason to tear open a section of our roof on Labor Day. We are getting a new roof started the day after, so we knew this was our only opportunity to repair the old tongue and groove boards that had rotted decades earlier. The previous owner had opted to go over them with plywood (which is great, except why not fix the damage first??), which I had to remove to get access to the bad boards. And of course there was no way that we’d consider doing this until just before we were getting a new roof installed.
Once I got the plywood off, it became apparent that instead of 3 rotten boards, we had 6. And actually we had more, as you can see in the photo, but the ones I left alone were only bad on the top. If the bottoms were solid and were still holding paint, I didn’t touch them. Since they are only decorative at this point and are shielded from weather, they’ll be fine. The “new” boards were from the old back porch ceiling (since incorporated into the kitchen), which I had dismantled and stored in the garage. To see them in their native setting, see this post. This was one of the first times that we’ve been able to take advantage of our stockpile. We did spend some money getting boards dipped & stripped, but it is worth it to get the lead paint removed. Since we needed more boards than expected, I had to use our Speedheater infrared paint remover to clear the paint from where I had to saw through the extra boards. I don’t like the idea of kicking out a bunch of lead paint dust, especially with kids around!
Damaged T&G boards
And without the boards
Repaired eaves
