Casa de las Ratas 2/22

Casa de las Ratas Week 2

February 9, 2002

The palm tree was famous in the neighborhood for never having been trimmed. I always thought it looked like "Cousin It".
Here is the front view of the house after Ricardo hacked away at the group of palms for two whole days.

Me and some of the rat crew, Ozzy and Manny...

Dry and crusty old masonite false ceiling had to also come down in the dining room as well as the living room. Here is Jose Martin taking that down in the dining room. We are also opening the wall adjoining to the kitchen and will open that whole space up.

Here is the kitchen getting opened up into the dining room.

View from the third bedroom looking towards the front into the kitchen where Saulo is standing. This little block of closets needs to be turned into a laundry area eventually.

Here is what remains of the master bath after Paco demo'd it. Where the furnace's clay exhaust pipes and the soil stack met the roof was a great source of leaks. This wall was very wet so it all had to come down.

"Lo siento."


The living room: ceiling and no ceiling... The rats had a nice big nest up there.

My VW Bus can easily haul 16 foot lumber. This task is a bit more difficult in a little pickup truck, let me tell you from experience!

On the right you can see where Ricardo cleared away about 15 feet of overgrown bushes. The nieghbors said they hadn't been trimmed in 17 years.

Here is what the main flat roof drain area looked like after 3 layers of old roofing was pulled off. This is why ol' Elmer had all those goofy catch basins up in the ceiling in the kitchen..

And here is the view of that same drain area as viewed from underneath in the kitchen with some of the rotting beams replaced.

My roof rats almost finished with the new 1 x 6 sheathing on the flat roof.


Roof rats... Some of the edge beams were pretty much gone. See new sister beams installed. Both Jose Martin and Jose Luis were roofing guys before they came to work at Manley Labs. The wind was really howling on this day. See the distant palm trees. A big thanks goes out to the neighbors who lent us some power to run a circular saw. A case of Coors does wonders.

Up under the arched entry, more rot. Why? See below for next week's project...

This is the wrong way to do a valley on a mission tile roof. There are two valleys like this which need to be taken apart and the tiles cut so an open valley will let the water drain off (and not rot out the hall).