Wednesday, July 3, 2013

Wood Rot & Carpenter Bees

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When we bought our home two years ago we didn’t have rotten wooden window frames, or so we thought.  Being from the midwest, we were unfamiliar with the damage that carpenter bees can do on fascia boards.  We would quickly learn about both.

When a part of a window frame swung off the house this spring, we knew we had a problem.  When we were bombarded by low flying Cessnas (dang loud, dumb carpenter bees) and had to avoid their falling larva from the roof (yuck), we took a close look and found that they had pretty much destroyed a number of boards at the roof line by drilling holes for their nests.

Grumble, grumble.  After taking a few bids, we settled on a company called PJ Fitzpatrick to help us.  We would need the rotten wood replaced, new gutters, soffits and fascia which would be capped (but with wood grain design) to prevent the dang bees from being able to nest and to protect the wood from rotting again.  This type of work is way above our skill level so we were happy to let the experts have at it.  Frankly having professionals help us makes me feel like I’m actually a grown up.  Weird, I know.

They finished at 5pm today, just in time for us to set up for our 4th of July party.  They got the job done in two days and spent much of it working in the rain.  The crew of hunky Russian guys were skilled, polite, cleaned up after themselves, and I highly recommend them.  I sent them home with goodie bags of left over candy from Sophie’s 6th Candyland theme birthday party (which will be another post as soon as I get more pictures from the other parents).

So before I put up our decorations for the party, I decided to quick post the before and after shots.  The transformation is amazing and better yet, Mark should have no reason to be on the roof spraying the dang bees!  Peace of mind, baby.

BEFORE

*basement and 2nd floor windows had horrible wood rot unrelated to the dang bees.  Look at the damage the dang bees did to the wood!

AFTER

So pretty!

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