The ULTIMATE Creepy "Decoration"

Yes, I know.  Halloween has come and gone.  The decorations should have come and gone as well.  Mine did.  Or at least I thought they did.  Michael and I went through the house and stripped all of the Halloween stuff.  Down came the bats, owls, rats, spiders and crows!  The mantles were cleared!  The shelves were emptied.  The walls were....well, you get the idea.  The Halloween decorations were removed and packed away for another year.  The Little Bayou House looks a mite bare.  I miss the decorations and I miss the creativity and excitement.

The dining room mantel bedecked in its full Halloween garb!

All of this was well and good until I noticed a damp place on the wall above the mantel in the dining room.  Something was amiss!  Walls are not supposed to be wet!  The large Magnolia picture was removed to reveal.......ROTTEN BOARDS!  Oh no!!!!!!  Somehow there must have been a leak!  Mark took one look at that mess and started.......creating a bigger mess!  Yep..it is one of the facts of life...to get anything fixed, a bigger mess must be made.  The wallboards were ripped out only to uncover rotted underlay and studs.  Ugh!  Everything had to go!  We ripped out everything all the way down to the brick chimney.  If you think that this does not make a huge mess, you are surely mistaken.  Once the plywood underlay was ripped out, bits of insulation and even part of the squirrel's nest from this summer came tumbling out onto the floor.  There was nothing that could be done to contain the goop!  AND...oh, my goodness!  This smelled BAD!  I believe it might have been easier to just pack up and MOVE!   But then again, if this had just been a few days earlier, the ripped out, rotted wood might have made for an interesting decoration!  The abandoned, haunted house look might have been the ultimate in Halloween decorations!  I would not even have had to put up fake cobwebs and plastic spiders!  The putrid odor would have lent a realistic touch to a dilapidated house with maybe more than a few ghouls and goblins about the place!

That same mantel just days later with the wall ripped out to repair a leak and have the rotten wood replaced!

But....Mark prevailed!  The leak was fixed and the gaping hole above the mantel soon had new studs and plywood underlay.  All of this was caulked and is now ready to receive the new planking.  Soon it will be almost impossible to perceive that such a renovation ever took place.  My picture can return to its rightful place and all will be back in order.  THEN I can start to decorate for Christmas!!!  Ok...I will wait just a bit...Thanksgiving first and then Christmas!  But...nothing says that I cannot start getting ideas and begin all new projects!  Yes!  Let the decorating begin!