I'm not currently living in the house right now, but plan to move in fairly soon. It had a old pellet stove that I pulled out, and sold. I recently had my chimney cleaned, and was told it looked really good. In the meantime I installed a cricket on the roof because some of the original flashing didn't look that great. It appeared that some water may have gotten down into the wall.
Long story short, I ripped up all the lath/plaster/drywall to reveal that water had been dripping back behind the wall and rotted out some of the framing. Aside from repairing the framing, I also have two problems I need to figure out.
1. Behind the mantel there was a 2x4 that ran the length of the mantel under all the studs. This was beyond rotten, and was removed. Is it possible to fill this void with some kind of cement before repairing the framing? It appears the mantel was built around this when the house was built (1915-ish).
Here is a photo of the brick that was under the mantel. You can see the void behind the bricks where the 2x4 was placed. It was removed before I took the photo.
Opening up a can of worms... haha
2. My other problem is when they cleaned the chimney, they also removed some of the misc parts that were left behind from the pellet stove install. When they did this they had to pull down a brick or two. The problem now is under that 2x4 that was rotted, I can now see a small hole which leads into the "firebox?" area itself. The water over time must have damaged the mortar enough that when they pulled out the pellet stove parts it must have let loose. How should I go about repairing this?
Sorry for the long post, but this forum has been more than helpful in the past. Thanks in advance!
Long story short, I ripped up all the lath/plaster/drywall to reveal that water had been dripping back behind the wall and rotted out some of the framing. Aside from repairing the framing, I also have two problems I need to figure out.
1. Behind the mantel there was a 2x4 that ran the length of the mantel under all the studs. This was beyond rotten, and was removed. Is it possible to fill this void with some kind of cement before repairing the framing? It appears the mantel was built around this when the house was built (1915-ish).
Here is a photo of the brick that was under the mantel. You can see the void behind the bricks where the 2x4 was placed. It was removed before I took the photo.
Opening up a can of worms... haha
2. My other problem is when they cleaned the chimney, they also removed some of the misc parts that were left behind from the pellet stove install. When they did this they had to pull down a brick or two. The problem now is under that 2x4 that was rotted, I can now see a small hole which leads into the "firebox?" area itself. The water over time must have damaged the mortar enough that when they pulled out the pellet stove parts it must have let loose. How should I go about repairing this?
Sorry for the long post, but this forum has been more than helpful in the past. Thanks in advance!