The first repairs on the ADU started in November of 2022 with Mom and Dad visiting for about a month to help. They rented a sweet little Airbnb nearby, where I stayed a few nights during this project when the wall wasn't wall-ing.
The ADU/barn is structurally good, safe, and not very old. I'm feeling lucky about that, and it's on a concrete slab which I love. Based on the stains, we think it was previously used as a garage. Someday I will have concrete people come and properly finish the floors.
Coming into winter, the first thing we planned was to take out the wonky stove pipe (with no stove attached) and get the place heated with a new wood stove. This wasn't necessarily a difficult task but it was new for us so everything took a little longer, including getting the correct parts, and there are many parts. My Dad was a builder and finish carpenter for decades and built many homes in Santa Barbara. For obvious reasons, wood stoves are not commonplace there. And if I didn't make it clear in the last post, I don't know what I'm doing but I'm good at taking directions from a pro. YouTube University was also super helpful with the wood stove installation. We watched many videos.
Thankfully the only thing in that plastic bag was a towel, I was half-expecting a dead critter.
Simultaneously, we started regrading and fixing rot on the east-facing exterior wall that runs the length of the living room and bedroom. The concrete slab is two levels inside the ADU. The bathroom is lifted a few inches above the rest of the house, Dad is next to the lifted bathroom slab.
Because the soil was more of a mound with the high side at the house, there was a lot of digging to do to both level this out and dig a trench deep enough for the 2 x 12 pressure-treated wood to hold in the gravel. Shovel and cart was a workout.
As you can tell from this photo, with the exterior panels and insulation cut out, the interior cement board does not sit on the slab. They are typical 4' x 8' panels and the ceiling height is greater. After taking off the baseboards and crown we found they were both taller than average because there was no cement board backing behind them. This ADU was thrown together and was incredibly energy inefficient.
Dad sticks his hand under a post that is no longer doing its job. Luckily not all of the posts were damaged. We could also touch the inside baseboard by putting our and along the slab under the insulation. The gravel in these photos was our addition to the trench, doing that first was key.
Before, not looking good.
After cleaning it all out we added pressure-treated bottom pieces to brace against the posts. If you zoom in on the posts, you can see that odd posts rest on the slab and even are buried in the earth. Also noticeable is that these exterior walls are only framed with these posts, no 2 x 4's to be found.
Close-up of how we further braced the posts. We also added concrete under the rotten posts, caulked the slab to the bottom layer, and ran flex tape along the length.
This was very exciting because it was getting noticeably less drafty inside the house. Also satisfying to see something so messy look clean and orderly. At this point, we still hadn't installed the wood stove but that's next on the list.
Before we could put the exterior panels back on we added a pressure-treated board along the bottom for backing for the panels and as an extra layer of protection the gravel would lay against. It was cold at the lumberyard as you can see by the frost on the center of the board.
We reused the insulation but shoved extra pieces in to fill in the gaps.
Then we put up new plywood panels where the underlayer exterior siding was.
We didn't put up the exterior panels right away because we still had to make a Home Depot run for z-flashing to protect the bottom piece. Already so much better!
Admiring our work. Next, we finish the wood stove installation and put up rain gutters where they're missing.
Well described!