So there were termites........

When we had the inspection done, they noted that there was some old termite trails, but everything was dead.

They were right about things being dead. What they didn't see because it was all cunningly covered up was the damage behind the newer drywall.

Mulch, some would call it.

 Seriously, it was very cunningly covered up.

Morris took an exploratory tap to the base of the wall in the dining room the first night we were in there after signing and nearly put his whole shoe through with that gentle tap.  He then started peeling back some of the drywall that mostly just crumbled and it just kept going. Eventually we had bare, partly shredded beams and piles of debris everywhere.

Very fortunately, Morris knows how to do all sorts of things - from general construction to carpentry to electrical to plumbing - so I was only partly terrified of what was about to happen.

After a bunch of trips to Home Depot (fortunately just around the corner from the house) we were set to go with a bunch of tools.  (Thanks, dad for the housewarming gift of a new sawzall!)  So Saturday morning, Morris started putting in a new wall! While he was in there, he figured it made sense to go ahead an add in some built in shelving and a place to add in an Alexa and speakers for the future smart home setup.

I have been happy to help, even if my skills do not really include accurate hammering of long framing nails. I feel like the kid at teeball that everyone knows still can't manage to hit the ball, but I can drive some screws in and hold things while Morris works on them.

Morris decided that it made more sense to use plywood instead of drywall as the replacement because of 2 reasons - first, we were planning to put up a faux stone sheet on the inside so we don't need the smooth face of the drywall, and second, DRYWALL IS CRAZY HEAVY AND HARD TO WORK WITH!

So, there was a wall, then there wasn't a wall, and then there was a wall again!  Now it was time to start making it pretty on the inside (like us).  Morris started with a shelf running the length of the room and worked out from there, and started adding in the stone wall design.  And he got to display all of his carpentry skills and show of what his new toys can do.

While he was working on that, I was helping hold things or running the carpet shampoo machine in the upstairs to see if we might be able to salvage some of the "murder carpet" there while we focus on redoing the downstairs floors. There are some... suspicious... stains in the upstairs bedrooms on the carpet and I've watched a lot of murder mysteries / Forensic Files shows. But the shampoo did help and we should be able to live with those for a minute.

So next up is painting wall, staining the floors, putting in the flooring, adding shelves, and putting something on the windows.