Residential Archaeology (Reno Tales: Part 2)

Dissecting the history of a house is an essential part of rectifying any problems it might have. If a house has been extensively renovated, it’s difficult to tell what you’ve got where and how it’s attached unless you carefully and methodically disassemble it layer by layer. More often than not, you’ll discover something that was done “the old way,” “the lazy way,” or just plain wrong — and you’ll end up taking everything apart to make it safe and secure.

Let it be no secret: I’m a big fan of Mike Holmes. Sure, he’s a TV personality, but he seems to have the right attitude towards construction: “Take it down. I want to see what’s behind there. I don’t like it, and I want to make it right.” In my mind, this is a three step process.

• Expose the problem
• Understand the problem
• Fix the problem

I suppose this would be a good time to talk about the scale of my renovation. I’m renovating a 620 sq. ft. space that forms my living room, dining room, and entry area. The ceiling is vaulted one way up 16 feet in the living room (which I actually use as a dining room), and the normal 8 feet height in the dining room, which I use as a TV area. The dining area is against the fireplace, which is against the back wall of the house. The kitchen is against one wall, and I place a buffet against the other wall. The TV area with the lower ceiling is darker to keep reflections off of the TV when watching movies — and because it’s used far less than the dining area!

Initially, I’d planned to do a rolling renovation… I’d take down a wall at a time and get it back up before I moved on. While more time-consuming, this would’ve really cut down on the amount of scuzz that was in the air and would be least disruptive to living in the house as I was performing the renovation. But after exposing a few of my problems, I took it all down … which wasn’t all bad since I ended up doing some extra work to install some new electrical items, which really improved the look of the space.

Exposing My Problems

I knew about three problems and had suspicions or questions about a few more.

The first problem I knew about was a leak around/in the chimney. We solved this by re-flashing around the chimney, installing a diverter on the roof to guide the water away from the very flat five foot wide chimney (instead of installing an expensive cricket), and using some Blackjack roofing goo to seal where a previous ‘repair’ had not repaired the issue. On the inside of the house, a bunch of drywall deterioration was visible. When we fixed the roof, we didn’t touch the drywall deterioration. Fixing this deterioration was the original scope of this project.

Second, there was a leak around the clerestory windows. They had been leaking from the outside periodically, and condensation from the inside had leaked down the drywall causing staining on the roof. I wanted to expose the area around them to look for mold problems. I’d fixed this for the most part by replacing them with dual-pane windows a few months ago. The next step was obviously to get the drywall and trim patched up.

Third, the front door leaks air like a sieve because it was installed incorrectly and the frame is warped.

On top of those three problems, I found a two more.

Where the roof meets the clerestory, the flashing probably allowed rain to be blown back up into the wall. There was lots of evidence for this in old watermarks on the framing. This needed to get traced back and addressed.

The insulation in the cathedral ceiling was rotten. Not just any sort of rotten, but moldy rotten, full of dead carpenter ants rotten, and loaded with all kinds of toxic stuff you don’t want to breathe. I needed to figure out why this was happening and address it.

Understanding My Problems

The chimney leak and front door leak were pretty well understood.

The front door frame had been replaced at some point and wasn’t re-installed correctly. As the door opens and closes over time, if it’s not shimmed in properly, it’ll eventually kick out at the bottoms… especially if it gets wet like this one had. The chimney leak was caused after the most recent re-roofing; the rafters in the cold ceiling were twisted 10+ degrees off of plumb because they had gotten very wet, then had been re-sheathed wet without making sure they were plumb. Oops. Being off plumb created a gap between the flashing and the decking. This had been a persistent problem for ten+ years.

With the clerestory, there were an unbelievable three sources of water coming in. The first was the windows themselves. Water was condensing on the inside because it was the highest point in the house, so warm air containing vapor that people have breathed out or from cooking.

Inspection Note: When replacing windows, leave the labels on them until the project is done. This lets the inspector know that you’ve met the requirements for energy efficient glazing.

The third source was fascinating. When the roofing was last re-done, they didn’t feed tar paper up behind the siding like they should have, probably because they would’ve had to re-do the siding. As a result, water can get blown up behind the flashing — which, with the lack of tar paper, meant that water blew directly into the wall and soaked the insulation, framing, and drywall. You could see daylight through it!

You can see the water on the 2×6 that’s holding up that part of the roof. The 2×12 with sandwiched plywood that forms the header over the living room was showing serious signs of rot.

Last, we’ve got the rotten ceiling insulation to deal with. There’s soffit vents in four of seven bays that head to the peak of the cold roof. That means that warm, moist air can enter from outside, but there’s no way for it to leave — it heads up into the roof and stays there.

Resolving My Problems

The front door was easy to fix. Replace the front door with a new $150 low-e front door. Bam. Done. (I have simple tastes — and right now, ‘not drafty’ is high on the list.)

We ripped the old aluminum single-paned windows out (and the siding over them) and put in new low-e windows with energy-efficient glazing, which let us flash the edges of the windows properly and will prevent condensation on the inside. Note again that you need to remove the siding around the windows as well in order to flash properly!

To fix the gap beneath, I did a hack. To fix it properly, I should’ve fed roofing felt under the shingles (which have nails in them that I’d have to pull up) and the siding (which have nails in it that I’d have to pull up). That’s a mess I didn’t want to get involved in. I ‘hacked’ it, since the roof won’t get replaced for about five years yet and the siding will have to get pulled up a bit at the bottom in order to properly keep water out of the inside of the structure.

Fixing the insulation was interesting. The easiest way was to make sure all the soffit areas are vented, and then put in peak vents along the top of the roof. We ended up using turtle vents since they were easy to retrofit.

Problems I Couldn’t Fix

The racked rafters was impossible to fix unless I tore the roof off. If I tried to twist them back, the nails that hold the roof sheathing to the rafters would tear out, creating holes in the roof. I’d change the entire slope of the roof, which would tear up the flashing at the chimney and create gaps between the shingles, probably tearing them in the process. The only other thing that I could have done was sister in more rafters. Since the roof hadn’t moved in the past 10 years, adding more wood isn’t really necessary and could affect the structure by adding weight up high.

Unfortunately, having these rafters racked created it’s own issues. Most notably, I had planned to hang those can lights in the ceiling, and the widest the brackets will go is 23 inches. The twisted rafters are more than 24 inches apart. That’s going to cause complications with hanging the lights and the drywall.