And then it rained

So my DH and I have been getting all enthusiastic about doing some much-needed work on the house, right? You'd think this would make all good things better.

Well.

The last thing we had to do on the deck was to replace two joists. Simple, right? It began as a bit of a chore, because a lot of the screws that held the deck surface to the joists didn't want to come out, and some of them broke off. This is normal stuff for decks. When my mother rebuilt her deck, she came across the same thing.

But then when we pulled the first joist, we found that about three feet of the beam tied to the house that supported the joists was rotten. Not just a little rotten. I pulled out handfuls of sawdust and a couple of termites. On top of that, the wet damage extended down below the beam. I could push my fingers through the siding there. It ran along the family room window.

We have T-11 siding that's tied directly into the framing. There's no intervening plywood.

In short, we have a hole in the side of our house.

This isn't a DIY situation. Luckily, I have a neighbor who's a contractor. When the rain lets up, I'm going to ask him to come over and frown at the damage with me.

Oh yes, I almost forgot to mention. After a long dry spell, it's now raining. And we have a hole in the side of our house. After listening to it rain all morning from about 7:30am, and after the panicked realization that we have a hole in the side of our house and maybe I should like, you know, cover it?, I decided to check the weather report. Intermittent rain after 1pm, it says. Well it's pouring right now. I'm a little afraid to find out what it's going to do in the afternoon.

There's a tarp on the deck now. The section in front of the sliding door isn't safe to walk on, because it's missing a joist and the surface is too soft to trust our weight to it. But at least it's staying dry at the spot where there's a hole in the house.

Weeeee!

I don't know what we're going to do, but I expect that whatever we do will probably be expensive.

Wish us luck!