These are pictures of our house. This house was built in 1998 by Dennis Godshall of Harleysville, PA. The house was not quite 7 years old when these were taken. We started to suspect we had a problem because the rooms inside developed a musty smell - we traced the smell to around the electrical outlets, so we knew it was something inside the walls. We could not see any leaks, but a moisture meter did detect moisture in the walls at multiple spots. You can see that due to multiple construction defects (including defective stucco, incorrect window installation, and improper grading), the house was literally rotting to pieces beneath an exterior that appeared to be fine. Not even our contractor expected the damage to be as extensive as what they found.
This photo album will document the before, during, and after pictures of the repair process. Note that we start the story with lots of background - if you're just after the gory details, skip to picture 15. You can page through the pictures using the "Next" or "Show All" links on the left side below this message.
Please feel free to sign the guestbook or add comments to the pictures. If you'd like to email me privately, you may do so at defectivehouse@comcast.net
Date(s): September 30, 2005. 61 - 90 of 410 Total. 14795 Visits.
61 Uncaulked Crack While photographing all the cracking, I found one that we missed. Here is what the cracks looked like pre-caulking. Not very big, but apparently big enough....
62 More screwed up copperwork I thought I'd add some more pictures of our fine copperwork. Here is the roof of our bay window - note all the nails through the top and front.
Although I've grown somewhat fond of the attractive polka-dot effect, we are having the whole roof replaced. Note all the cracks above the window as well.
63 Porch Roof Flashing Another example of the poor copper flashing work on the porch roofs. Note how the counterflashing slopes TOWARDS the house here, promoting great drainage - right into the wall!
All the roofs were flashed like this, and two of them leaked. Our temporary solution was to put a monster gob of caulk on top of the flashing, sloping it to drain forwards instead of back. This one never leaked, so we never gobbed it up with caulk.
64 Front Porch Stoop Here is the front porch. (Sorry about all the moss - guess I'll have to hit the porch with the bleach bucket too!). Guess where the rim joist is here? Behind the stonework.
Now, you'd think it would be pretty protected by the porch overhang (look how the back part of the porch is all dry while the front is all wet), but remember that random rim joist shot from the basement (picture #31)? Yup - right behind this stonework. If it's in bad shape, I guess we'll have to rip up the porch....that would pretty much suck.
65 Back of the stucco Carl (webmaster of the wonderful website www.badstucco.com - if you've enjoyed my site, you'll love his) wanted me to post a picture of the back of the stucco. Here you go Carl! "Metal lath should be attached at 6-inch centers. Lath..." View Comments...
66 By the end of Thursday, 10/6 We had buttoned up the back of the house, in preparation for the deluge this weekend.
67 Hey Look - Window Wrap! What a novelty.... "What a neat idea no tape over the bottom nail fin to ..." View Comments...
68 Alas...a setback Unfortunately, after the house was all closed up, the musty smell came back full force in the laundry room (shown here) and east wall of the family room (to the left of this picture). I guess we either didn't leave it dry long enough or didn't remove enough insulation. Dave's going to kill me when I tell him we have to rip it all off. "Not comments, yet about condition of interior drywall..." "The drywall was not moldy, except in the few places I..." View Comments...
69 Moving around to the west side There's a little rot in the corner where the family room meets the back porch. "looks like the grade was a little high!" "Why is there no moisture barrier under the bottom nai..." View Comments...
70 Family Room West Wall grading issues Can you even see the foundation way down there? It's a good 6" down in the dirt. Time to bring in the bulldozer....
At least I don't have to worry about destrying the landscaping - as you can see here, it's already toast.
71 Living Room South Window Here's the corner from pictures 33-35. Note the rot in the corners, right where all the cracks were.
72 Closeup Here's a closeup of the rotten trim from the previous picture. It's not super-spongy here - you have to use a screwdriver to get it to do this, not just your finger. So hopefully, the studs will be hanging tough back there and we won't need another $250 window frame.
73 Friday 10/7 - Demo Day Today was a big day. Because of the rain, Dave was able to get a crew of immigrant roofers to come in and demo the stucco. These guys were GOOD! They worked fast and without any breaks, and when they saw us taking pictures, they started working double-time, like we were spying on them or something. I felt so bad, but since I unwisely chose to take German in high school instead of Spanish, I didn't know how to tell them that I was not photographing them, only documenting the rot for my legions of internet fans.
Speaking of that, we've got lots of new rot to show you, so lets get started....
74 Front Master Bedroom windows This is the NE corner (front left) of the house. You can see that there's plenty of rot between the 2 windows. Remember, those upper windows are the master bedroom, which smelled the worst. Again, the corner is very rotten all the way up to where it was protected by the eaves.
75 Moving over to the front door Things aren't so bad here. The sheathing is discolored, but solid. None of these rooms had any kind of odor, so it seems that my "stink scale" is still on target. I'm still a little worried about how the rim joist goes behind the porch - in fact, I'm more worried due to something I'll show you later (I saw it, but didn't take a picture, and now it's all tarped up...).
76 Moving to the right... We have my son's room on top and the living room on the bottom. Lots of rot in the corner. My son's room had a bad musty odor but the living room didn't. The've both got lots of rot, though - there will be some work to do here.
77 Closeup of the rot in the NW corner This is a the bottom corner from the previous picture.
78 Moving around to the side You can see how the rot starts at the top and works its way down around this side of the house as well. It's going to be a bitch getting this out around the screen porch - I hope we don't have to take the porch apart.
79 Inside the porch You can see that the rot from the corner extends in pretty far. My contractor thinks he can dig the sheathing out from behind the porch post, but if he finds studs or something that needs fixed back there, we're going to be in trouble. "I live in Montgomery County Pa. Suburb of Philadelphi..." View Comments...
80 Under the Screen Porch Further down inside the porch, you can see discoloration but no rot. This is the center of the west wall of the house, and until we put the porch on 2 years ago, it was completely exposed to the weather. There were some cracks in the stucco here that were already caulked when we moved in - perhaps that's why the sheathing isn't so bad here.
81 The other end of the screen porch is the SW corner of the house. Remember that there was lots of rot around the corner from this (the windows next to the back porch). There's a little bit here, but it's not too bad.
82 West Gable Peak Here's the gable peak on the west side of the house. Discolored, but not too bad up top. We didn't get a good look at the bottom yet, and now it's all covered by a tarp. You'll have to stay tuned to see if this is a mess or not. If it is, we'll probably have to dismantle the screen porch roof to get to it.
83 Back Porch This is around the corner from the last screen porch picture you saw. You can see that the rot in this corner is pretty bad. The outlets under these windows had an odor, but only if you really sniffed the outlet. The room never smelled musty.
84 Another mystery This is the sheathing under the back porch roof. As you can see, it is well protected from the weather - there is NO WAY rain could have ever gotten to this. So why is it all rotten? Can't say for sure, but I'm figuring it's due to the leaky porch roof (during heavy rains, before we added our great gobs of gutter-seal, we would sometimes get water dripping into the house on the other side of these windows). Since we're having all the copper porch roofs reflashed, that should take care of this. I will have the copper guy inspect the standing seams above this roof just to be sure that it's not coming in somewhere else though... "Is this a valley or a rake wall above?
Looks like ..." View Comments...
85 Family Room West Wall Remember how I said the musty smell was coming back in the east family room wall after we felt-papered it up? Well, we decided to experiment with the west wall. We took all the insulation out and all the sheathing off (wet or not). Had it not been about to pour, we would have left it open, but as is, we nailed plywood back over it (without insulation) and tarped it. When it clears up again, we'll take the plywood off, treat the studs (there's no mold or rot on them anywhere but we'll treat them anyhow), put NEW insulation in, and the plywood back on. Hopefully the odor was just trapped in the old sheathing/insulation and this will take care of it. Course, it's adding significantly to the expense...but hey, we don't really NEED to buy food anyhow...I could stand to lose a few pounds.
86 Here's what happens when you don't have kickout flashing My contractor took his kickout flashing out when he was felting the house and didn't put it back. Note the stream of water gushing out of the roof/wall intersection and straight down the wall. Now picture that going behind my stucco every time it rained for 7 years....
We put the kickout flashing back in preparation for the 5 (yes, 5) inches of rain we are supposed to get this weekend. We've been in major drought conditions for 2 months now, but as soon as they start working on my house, the skies decide to open up. Maybe I can build an ark with some of that demo-ed sheathing....
87 We no longer have a house.... ...we have a giant black tarp with a front door.
88 More tarp I have no idea how much rain we've gotten so far, but I just drove home and had to go 10 miles out of my way because every road leading toward my house was flooded. Not a good sign. Hope they did a real good job on these tarps!
89 Monday 10/10/05 - A new, wet week After the deluge this weekend (5.28" of rain was the official measurement at the local middle school), the weather folks predicted more rain EVERY FREAKIN DAY THIS WEEK. So we're not going to get very far. Today, Dave is repairing the wall around the really bad window (above the bilco doors). Here you can see the rot in the header above the window.
90 Second story subfloor above the window Note that the subfloor in the master bedroom is damaged even on the left side of the window (which seemed to be in much better shape than the right).
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