Help! I bought a rotten MH

[sharkboy]

Hi, new to this website, and new to the joys of MH living. I purchased a preowned Guerdon home, built in 93. The previous owners built a deck along the west elevation of the home. Gets lots of wind and rain here on the SW Washington coast. Anyways, the entire length of this house has rotten siding, some rot in the first 12 inches of the wall studs, the sill or base plate is rotting as well. Not sure how much of the 2 x 6 floor joists and/or subfloor are rotting yet. I am unfamiliar with MH building techniques. I'm quickly finding out that standard building practices do not apply to MH's. I am unsure how the 2 x 6" deck is attached to the metal frame.

I was thinking that I can intall temporary support posts to support the vaulted ceiling from inside. Should I install supports below the MH deck to transfer weight to the ground or will the MH frame handle this? I then intend to cut out the rotten areas all down the wall of the house and marry new wood onto the remaining good wood. Big project I know. Never done anything like this before, but have no choice.

Also, I just ordered the manual for MH repair and upgrade, but not sure when I would recieve it. Thus my post. Any constructive advise other than shooting myself would be greatly appreciated.

[rmurray]

Sorry to hear you plight...You might want to re-post this post to the Repair forum here...The author of the book you bought is a moderator of that forum..Maybe he will give you some personal advice...

Sounds like you should have had a home inspector involved in your purchase..Also sounds like this job might be slightly more than most would like to attempt by themselves....Have you gotten professional comntractors to give you estimates to do this job ???

[Dr T]

just a few notes...the frame of thr mobile home should not be supporting deck...much of the water damage is probably caused by the deck construction not the mobile home builder...you have a big project...proceed with caution...gather info...so you can redo it once

[sharkboy]

Thanks for the response. We were living in California, and buying this house in Wash. State. Our real estate agent was a newbie, friend of ours. Mistake #1. We did have a home inspection done, but were not present. Our agent was. Mistake #2. This is a small coastal community where everyone knows everyone. So I know that the report was written favoring the previous owners. There is also a lot of what I call "creative wiring" all over. You know, Romex wire nutted together, hanging from rafters, etc. We had to ask for a disclosure statement, otherwise they wouldn't have provided one to us. When they finally did, it was full of blatant lies and misrepresentations. Anyways, there was a notation on the inspection report of some siding showing some signs of rot. In fact the previous owners knew about it because I had to remove a planter box that was built just to hide the worst part of the rot.

I haven't looked into any contractors because the ones available here in this rural coastal town are few, and they are booked solid for months. Won't even return phone calls. I also have paid thousands of dollars for "professional" work. The problem is that these professionals hire any body they can find off of the street to do their work for them. I end up paying big bucks for sloppy work. I can do better than sloppy work myself and not have to pay the big bucks.

I will repost in the other forum as you suggest. Thanks for your help.