[Lynn]

This is where it really gets interesting. You saw earlier where I had to cut off the bottoms of all the studs (after building a temporary wall to hold the roof up) and have a mason rebuild the brook stem wall.

I was thinking I would be doing the same thing with the next two thirds of the wall. I was wrong.

This middle section was even less stable than the West 1/3 of the wall. Even before removing tin, there were sections I could swing in and out about 6 to 8 inches. I knew the studs were rotten; I didn't know how bad the stem wall was.

There was a small bathroom in this area. I decided to demo the whole thing. Poor construction, and not enough room for a deep sink. Sorry, did not take pics of the bathroom area before and after. Good news is demo is fast and relatively easy. Bad news? It was mostly what was holding things up on that part of the wall.

First pic is the toilet flange. You can see how bad the wood is on the wall. Most of the studs had already been sistered; and not very well.

Second pic is just outside where the toilet flange is. You can see the brick stem wall down there.... about a foot below grade. There was nothing bigger than a tooth pick left from the bottom sill plate it was so rotten. A few studs were just sistered directly onto the stem wall with no sill plate. At first I thought about just getting more brick and building it up even higher. But, the farther East we went the farther below grade the stem wall was, so that ruled out just building it up.

Time to get creative. Stay tuned.