Breaking Into the House

Now that the foundation and floor of the Big Room have been repaired, it is time to break through to the original house so that the floor plan is more open and hospitable. The Big Room will be the new living room. The original house wall is about 9 inches away from the wall of the Big Room addition. You can see the original 110 year old clapboards are still there, as were hundreds of spiders and a mess of electrical wires. An animal hole — mouse hole? — in the old house is visible, as are mice urine trails. The clapboards have been removed and are being saved. The kitchen is on the other side of the house wall.

Above, you can see the animal hole in the original wall.

The pile on the bottom left corner of the photo is mouse feces. The builders of the addition stood the studs for the wall of the addition on top of this pile of feces! They did not even bother to clean the mess before they installed the studs.

You can see, above, a bit of the spider infestation between the walls.

The ceiling joists were covered with mouse feces and chewed insulation.

As mice travel, they dribble urine behind them. This signals other mice and leaves trails for mice to follow. The urine trails are also what hawks and owls see when they hunt mice. And they are also how cats and dogs are able to find mice to eat. On the old clapboards above, you can see the effect of decades of mice urine trails on the wall.

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