And the Walls come tumbling down

One problem that has existed for a while now is the decay of the "playroom".  When the house was originally built there was a screened in porch on the back of the house.  At some point in the 60's my Mom and Dad had the porch enclosed to create a room.  This is where all of our toys went as well as the TV!  Needless to say we spent a lot of time out there when we were little.  The room had a gas space heater as it was not part of the ducting for the furnace. Here is a picture of the back of the house:

Over the years the room transitioned into more of a junk room.  The space heater quit working decades ago.  About five years ago we had the washer and dryer moved from the basement to this room.  For quite a while it has had a bad odor about it.  I noticed that the baseboard along the wall was mostly gone leaving a trail of black mold behind.  I started by tearing the paneling off to reveal what sort of problems we might have.  Here is what I found:

As you may notice the sill plate is completely gone as are the bottom 4 inches of the studs.  I don't think I ever made a video of it but with a light pressure of the foot it was pretty easy to move the wall out by six inches or more!

I got one quote to replace the wall, it was going to cost at least $8500 , Ouch!  With Ray egging me on the decision was made that we can do this our selves.  How hard could it be?

This past week end with Ray's help I tore down the wall.  Here are a few pictures of the job:

So whats next?  Good question.  I was so exhausted after Saturday that I couldn't work on it at all on Sunday.  Gloria did go through and get a lot of cleaning done.  Looks like we will build a new wall late this week or over the weekend.  Our plan is to have three sets of double hung windows similar to the remaining windows seen above on the left.  The small wall that is still standing is the dinette area of the kitchen and is original to the house.  At some point I plan to pull the aluminum siding off of it to see how much rot we have there.  The root cause of this mess is fairly obvious.  Notice the concrete slab which forms the floor.  The wall was located such that it had about a 1/2 inch ledge on the outside which allowed rainwater to seep under the siding and to work it's magic over time.  Water and Wood, not Good!