We’ve started demo-ing the family room/playroom. This is a better view of the room (the picture’s a little dark, we took it at night):

And we found…

TERMITE DAMAGE! Argh!

(Yes, it’s in an area prone to wood-boring insects, and yes, we had a termite inspection. No, we are not happy with our inspector at the moment.)

So far it looks like it’s confined to that room, thankfully. There was one eaten-up beam under the stairs (where we’ll be putting in a toy closet):

When we took down the wood paneling from the wall that the playroom shares with the garage we also found damage in those beams.

Juan already ripped them out and replaced them with new ones.

Because of the cold, there are no active termites now, and we have an exterminator lined up for the spring. We’re on the lookout for more damage but haven’t found any.

We knew we were going to run into frustrating surprises but this one was completely unexpected!