Look at it. Just sitting there. Looks so innocent. You'd never guess what a nest of pestilence it is inside...
So we decided to renovate the garage into a nice storage/work space. The garage is currently a no-man's-land inside.
Firstly, the door's broken. It was broken ages ago by a giant nearby ivy plant that had grown into the door frame and pulled it away from the wall. I tore the ivy out ages ago. I hate ivy because it destroys buildings and has no habitat value for anything other than rats. Unfortunately, the door's still broken and the rats still hang out. Here's a picture of the broken door with some ivy sprouts that are trying to make a comeback:
And here's a picture of the grease stains that rats leave as they crawl along the interior of the garage. They're so greasy they leave stains. Just think about that. So greasy they leave stains!
I know these stains aren't just a relic of olden times, because there's been fresh rat poop on the floor. Fresh, hanta virus-laden poop. Sadly the rats are only half the pests. You might remember in a previous post that I had a termite guy out in February. Well, he sprayed what he could see. But we couldn't see much. And there was so, so much more. When we started taking apart the old door frame, it became clear that my garage is basically a wood sponge with stucco and paint on it:
Yeah, so basically, this is going to be an extensive renovation. We're just at phase one right now, where we repair the door frame and replace it with nicer doors. After the door is fixed and we know rats can't come back in, we'll clean up the bio-hazard rat waste and lysol/bleach the heck out of everything. That will be the end of this phase.
After that, we'll pull off the old plywood interior walls to expose the rest of the rotted and termitey wood. Spongey wood will get replaced with new wood and everything will get sprayed with termite pesticide foam. Then, in the final phase, we will get to start finishing the interior and turning into the actual work/storage space.
For now though, I have a giant pile of rotten wood sitting in the driveway.
More to come in the weeks ahead...
After that, we'll pull off the old plywood interior walls to expose the rest of the rotted and termitey wood. Spongey wood will get replaced with new wood and everything will get sprayed with termite pesticide foam. Then, in the final phase, we will get to start finishing the interior and turning into the actual work/storage space.
For now though, I have a giant pile of rotten wood sitting in the driveway.
More to come in the weeks ahead...
wow - this is going to be a tremendous job to get through but it's going to be well worth it in the end when it all comes together and you're enjoying said work/storage space! Good luck and I'm looking forward to seeing this project evolve.
ReplyDeleteThanks Douglas! Yeah it's turning into a way bigger thing. Recent update that I'll be posting about hopefully soon is that we learned we have subterranean termites, not drywood. We're worried about the house now, so we may soon be exploring the depths of the crawl space with the termite guy. Ugh.
ReplyDeleteTermites are absolutely awful. You should keep tree branches and vines from touching your garage, as these are the common avenues termites use to move from one place to another. It happened to my wooden cabin once, and I used the bait system to exterminate the infestation. It required constant inspection, though, but it helped a lot.
ReplyDeleteOoh, termites! They really left serious damage in your garage, huh! Have you tried using termite repellents? These work by discouraging termites to enter a specific area, thus keeping them from forming a colony in your garage. May I add that I think you should do something about the rats in your garage too.
ReplyDeleteI'll suggest that you just completely rip all the pieces of wood that had been infected by termites. Afterwards, call your termite guy to apply some termiticide on the soil, so that the termites would eventually leave your garage. I think there's no other way than to do that.
ReplyDelete