This greenshouse will be the death of me!

As loyal readers will know, our house has a little 10x10 greenhouse on the second story.  It is positioned over the kitchen addition and has been the focus of our attention recently as we have attempted to address water leaks.  These leaks have been holding up the progress on the kitchen remodel.

A few weeks ago we tackled a tear-off and replacement of the flat roof adjacent to the greenhouse.  That project required tearing off the 2nd story wood sitting deck, 3 layers of rotted roof decking and then rebuilding it all. To our dismay, some of the water leaks continued.  This drove us to take a closer look at the greehouse as the source of the leaks.  What we found is astonishing:

The tools and other junk in this picture are sitting on a built-in planter box.  We had to open it up to try and get a closer look at the back wall. Unfortunately we couldn't get to the problem area so the decision was made to demolish the planter box.

 

 

The demo work on this house never ends! The planter box was well built. The copper lining contained the water from the plants and should fetch a pretty penny at the scrapyard.

Extension rot from moisture and carpenter ant infestation!

The rot turned out to be WAY more extensive than anyone guessed.  This knee wall holds up the glass ceiling.  All of the wood... the studs, the double top plate and the bottom plate are completely disintegrated, except for one stud.  The wood just turns to mulch as soon as you touch it. We cant really figure out how this thing didnt collapse.