Termite Damage

There are a variety of reasons why we decided to tear out all the walls and take most of the house down to studs. One of those very important reasons was so we could see and evaluate the condition of the house's bones. While everything looked to be on the up and up, you just never know about what is hiding behind the walls.

An inspection of the house revealed old termite damage and neither of us were really surprised to hear that. It's an old house, and old wood is very tasty to munching bugs. Thankfully there is currently no active damage and the damage isn't too extensive.

One of the first rooms to get the walls torn off was the future dining room. And. Well. It wasn't pretty. I'm telling you right now that this room has it firmly in its mind to be the problem child of the whole stinking house. Not only did I throw up (in my mouth) the first day that I worked on the room, but also its the only room (so far) that has presented us with any amount of termite damage on the beams.

The subtle blue arrows point to the damage.

Its pretty funny to see how only one or a few certain beams can get affected. Why only that one piece of wood? A lot of the damage in this room is very centralized in certain spots. Which makes it easier to fix. So, overall this damage isn't much of a surprise or a problem.

If we made the decision to not tear out the walls would I be worried? No. Not really. I'm of the school of thought that if an old home is still standing strong today, then its going to keep standing strong for a looonnnggg time. Despite the damage you would not believe how solid the room is still. Pretty crazy how they used to build houses back in the day.

Termite damage is fug.