SO MUCH RAT POOP

October 20,2024

This weekend we left Anacortes feeling quite disgusting.  We did 3 dump runs and the last one on the way home was especially smelly. 

On our way up we stopped in Stanwood and bought an old farmhouse door for $100 from a lady off Facebook Marketplace.  It is so beautiful.  I will take a picture next time I am up. 

My mission this weekend was to get the carpet tack and the staples out of the downstairs bedroom.  I completed my mission and then I also removed the carpet tack and staples from the stairs.  Chad tore down the bedroom ceiling because we need to figure out what is going on with the upstairs bathroom.  Chad discovered 3 feet of space behind the bedroom closet.  There is a sewer pipe, furnace duct and furnace exhaust vent in that space.  We also discovered 3 dead rats and so much poop.  When Chad tore down the bedroom ceiling we discovered the rats had been all up in the insulation.  The ceiling in the bedroom had been dropped to make room for the heating duct for Wren's room upstairs and for the plumbing and electrical for the upstairs bathroom.  Chad pulled down the dry wall and insulation and I cleaned it up.  I had mopped the bedroom before all this destruction but it was mostly to try and get some of the pet stains cleaned up.  There is ship lap in the bedroom as well but it is covered with paneling and drywall.  I am thinking of leaving the drywall up and removing the paneling.  The problem is that in some areas the window trim is flush with the walls.  I don't like that look.  

Discovering that we had 3 feet behind the closet walls.  The pipes go down into the crawl space and there is enough of a gap around the pipes that a rat could fit in.  We will for sure correct this situation.

Behind that blue paper is more ship lap.  We will open up this wall going into the tiny hall in the kitchen that leads to the bathroom that we will eventually remove. 

The heating vent that goes up to the bathroom upstairs.  

More wallpaper.  There is so much wallpaper in this house.  I guess that was what they did to cover up the shiplap.  Layers and layers of wallpaper.  In some areas they have painted over the wallpaper. 

Carpet tack removed, many staples removed and baseboards removed.  At one point they painted the floors white but it wasn't the best job.  The 2 big brown spots on the floor are an outline of a paint stirrer and the other one must have been a stick that they didn't move when they painted.  There are also footprints in the paint.  

Both of these copper pipes leading to the bathroom upstairs had splits in the pipe.  

This was Saturday night when we finally decided to head over to the motel.  We usually go and get dinner and then go check in at the motel.  After we eat our dinner we head back to the house and work some more.  What a mess. At this point it is always hard to imagine that one day we will live in this space. 

Chad has started to take down the 2x4s.  We plan on exposing the bead board ceiling and thinking that we might leave the heat duct exposed or at least covered with a soffit.  The ceilings are so lovely and tall. 

Hello shiplap.  The plan for now is to create a hallway through the bedroom door that leads to the bedroom and then the other side will be the bathroom.  The bathroom will include that window. 

The reason why they dropped the ceiling. The bathroom will have to have dropped ceiling to accommodate the pipes. 

This little hallway leads to the bathroom that we will remove. To the left is the backside of that bedroom closet.  To the right is under the stairs.  Check out the rat trap that Chad set.  Hoping we don't catch anything.  Yuck. 

The stairs after removing the carpet tack and staples.  I did a quick scrub but I was running out of time so it wasn't a very good job.  At one point they must have painted a red strip down the middle of the stairs. 

There were so many staples on the corner of these steps.  It took me a while to get them off.  The stairs still look pretty bad.  I will clean them up better next time.  My next goal is to remove the carpet tack and staples from my studio, hallway and Wren's room.  This upstairs area has the worst of the pet stains.  

This is the upstairs hallway.  The pet stains are so bad that it is stripping off the paint.  How could anyone live like this?