The lovely home we purchased needed everything, but we knew that in advance. That being said, once demo begins, once you start peeling back that onion, you really appreciate how big the word everything can really be. You also begin to understand how devastating deferred maintenance can be for a home. When buildings aren’t maintained small issues snowball and become larger issues. Typical issues one finds – a drip turns into a leak. A leak turns into rotten joists. Rotten joists crack, leading to unsupported walls and sloping floors. In the case of this house because it only has a crawl space and no basement, sloping floors and unsupported walls created actual holes that invited creatures utilize to take up residence. I don’t like furry, rodent creatures, who does? But more serious for this home, not all the creatures who took up residence were furry, some were bugs. Bad, bad termite bugs. The termite infestation was left untreated for several years, which meant not a single joist, piece of trim, door, window sill, etc was left untouched. Everything, and I mean everything had to go. When the house you’re demoing was constructed during the era of lath and plaster, there is a lot of material to move out and it takes a while.
