It all started when I tried to rip down some wallpaper in the foyer. The drywall behind the stinky, stained, 70s wallpaper crumbled away, exposing an absolute nightmare behind it. It would have been bad enough to replace the drywall when we were hoping only to remove wallpaper, but the house had another surprise in store for us.

Where there should have been strong, 2x4 studs behind the drywall, there was instead a crumbling tissue paper-like structure that used to be wood. As we tore back more drywall, we saw more damage.

We ended up ripping down all the drywall in our foyer and into the den. Thankfully, Seth has a buddy who is in construction, and he was available on short notice (thanks, Jay!). Jay coached Seth through reframing the walls holding up our top floor. The termite damage stretched from our front door to the stairs and the den. It was remarkable that the house wasn’t crumbling to the ground.

Besides rebuilding all the walls, Seth had to frame out a linen closet by the bathroom. Trying to get into the minds of 1950s architects to figure out what the measurements were supposed to be was quite a challenge. No door in the house was a standard size, let alone a teeny-tiny linen closet that was desperately needed for storage. Besides all the termite damage, when we opened up the walls inside the closet, we discovered the skeletons of mice in the wall.

Somehow, Seth (with a little bit of my help) was able to frame everything and basically rebuild our house. After hiring out for the drywall work, we still need to texture-match and paint the ceiling. It’s a project whose finish line is still on our punch list.