Warning: That old carpet in the attic might be hiding more than dust

I was on a job in an older neighborhood in Cincinnati last month, pulling up the original shag from a finished attic. The homeowner said it was from the 70s. Underneath the padding, right along the exterior wall, the subfloor was completely soft. I poked at it with my knife and it went right through. Turns out, a roof leak from years back had been slowly dripping down the inside of the wall and rotting the wood from the edge inward, and the old carpet and pad just soaked it up and hid it. The damage was about three feet long. I had to stop the install, show the homeowner, and they had to call a contractor. It added a whole extra week to their project. Has anyone else found a major hidden problem like that under what looked like a simple carpet swap?

2 comments

2 Comments

fisher.reese14d ago

Honestly, that just sounds like a standard Tuesday in this line of work.

patricia_kelly14d ago

We had three servers crash at once last Tuesday, so yeah, that tracks. Just another day trying to reboot everything before the morning stand-up. It's funny how chaos just becomes the normal schedule.