By Joe Crain
As a caretaker you just never know where a repair job is going to lead you. What looks on the surface to be a big deal may turn out to be a problem that requires a very simple and uncomplicated fix. And of course, the opposite is also a possibility: what looks on the surface to be a very simple repair upon further inspection may actually require a major project that leads you down a totally unexpected reconstruction effort. So, until you get involved in a repair you just never know where things will lead.
It looked simple enough on the jobs list: “Repair hole in siding near back steps of the Little House”. I smiled to myself when I read that. 28 years of experience, at a place that had been around since 1929, had taught me that a hole in a building’s siding in a place that has very low traffic and virtually no rough and tumble camper traffic usually means a seemingly simple thing that is anything but simple! When I walked down to have a look, I found that a large section of siding on the Little House had been replaced sometime in the past with a large patch that stretched the full width the back door, just below it. I wondered to myself “what is that hiding?” Sure enough, just to the left of the patch was an innocent looking hole, about one-and-a-half inches long and maybe three-quarters-of-an-inch wide. Nothing on the outside of the building suggested the cause of the hole. It looked to be forming from the inside to the out, and with the big patch right next to it, I thought to myself, “Rot!” So, I pulled off the chunk of siding that contained the hole, and discovered an even bigger hole behind it in the sill plate and joist that ran about six inches to the left of where the surface hole was, leading directly to the big patch under the door. I of course now knew what that patch was hiding! I pulled the big, newer patch of siding off the building and sure enough that innocent looking hole on the outside was just a symptom of a much larger problem that had been covered over. I pulled off a lot more siding to reveal the full extent of the rot: a six-foot gap where rot and critter chewing had completely eaten away the sill plate and exterior wall joist!
It didn’t take long to see why the previous repair had ended in a patch-job; the only way to replace the rotted section was to remove the brick and concrete stairs leading to the door. Unfortunately, when the stairs were attached to the building, they went up past the brick foundation and pressed right up against the raw joist and sill plate. And wouldn’t you know, shortly after I got everything exposed, a chipmunk popped up from inside the hole and chittered at me. I grabbed my phone to get a picture of the little bugger but he ducked back in before I could get to the camera app. Well, after a bit of head scratching and thinking it over, I came to the only solution. It could not be not a new patch. The brick and concrete stairs had to be demolished so I could make a proper repair. I recruited Caretaker Cody to help, and with a couple of sledge hammers we made quick work of getting the stairs out of the way and dumped in the rubble pile where they could cause no more problems. With the stairs removed we were able to remove the rotted section and insert new material, and wrapped the whole works up with new siding and two coats of paint. While Cody and I moved on to leaf blowing Caretaker Andy took over the job of building a new wooden deck and set of stairs. I repaired the hole in the siding near the back steps alright… and I just like I suspected; it was a seemingly simple job that was anything but simple!
Watching the snow storm that was forecast to bring us one-to-three inches of snow, but has already brought us six inches and the snow is still falling (another seemingly little thing turning into a big thing), it’s Caretaker Joe At Camp.
