Old Wood & The Bugs Who Love It

Something that I find to be very cool about old homes is the wood used to build them. If you go to your local lumberyard (or in most people's case, your local Home Depot) and put a tape to a "2x4", you will see that you aren't really getting a 2x4, but a 1.5x3.5. The same goes for other standard cuts. It's really amazing to see a new "2x12" next to an old true 2x12, which I've been too used to seeing in our new house with all the repairs being made. The old wood is just so much more impressive!

I learned a new lesson this week - termites don't discriminate when it comes to lumber. They'll gladly eat any wood, old or new.

All the inspectors said the bugs were gone. All the inspectors said all the un-replaced wood was strong. All the inspectors were wrong.
We are going to install a ceramic tile floor in the kitchen. Ceramic tile must have a very solid base. I looked at the original hardwood (found after ripping up multiple layers of crappy laminate quasi-tile) and thought it seemed too soft to put tile down on. So, I called my friend Mark and asked his opinion, since he is a tile expert. He agreed that they looked soft, and pulled up a few boards. What we found automatically classified the day as a "bad day":

(The bottom photo shows what used to be one huge 4x12x12 beam. It was eaten in half. Completely shot. This is crazy amounts of damage.)

At this point, what can be done except construction? Over the last couple days, I tore up what remained of the hardwood. Yesterday, Mark and I rebuilt. What was originally very scary and anger-provoking turned out to be a lot of fun. While I'd prefer to be helping someone else fix their structural problems, I had a great time rebuilding my kitchen, literally from the ground up. And man oh man am I glad to have friends like Larry and Mark and Levon and Randy and... surely many others who have been so good to me over the years. I'm part of a church that is full of very talented folks. We have mechanics, carpenters, electricians, HVAC experts, handymen... good friends to have when one owns an old house!

Tomorrow morning, the termite people are coming to take away whatever bugs I haven't already scared off. I want them to die a slow and painful death.

And on that note... to the pictures!
At one point, most of the kitchen had no floor. There were joists to walk on, but it was definitely not a safe place to be. I love my wife, and I love to look at her, but I'd prefer not to be able to see her on the 2nd floor through the hole in the kitchen from the basement.
This is an exhausted me with my (father-in-law's) prybar, hanging out with my ginormous pile of rotten kitchen.
The bugs are apparently Catholic, as the statue of Mary (built in to the side of the house!) was unharmed by wood-boring insects. Also unharmed was the knockoff plastic mold of an Irish castle that Mary apparently protects with her large concrete-ness. I love this photograph. I have tentatively titled it "Robyn and The Virgin Castle Protector". And I might just go to hell for that.