So our family room has a little water damage and mold problem. Meh.
Each spring my family travels to the Outer Banks (aka OBX) in North Carolina for sun and fun. My family has always gone to the Outer Banks – my grandmother, her mother and her mother were born nearby. It’s what we do and it was time to visit again. As everyone packed to go; George and I decided to stay home and take care of business. *sigh*
Friday night/Date night was spent at Lowe’s purchasing heavy duty plastic, tape, a P100 respirator, protective eyewear, gloves, disposable rags, bleach and a plastic spray bottle to remove the water damaged wall and flooring along with any hidden mold that lay underneath. $Cha-ching! Once home, we stayed up late removing EVERYTHING from the family room, taping off doorways and return vents and covering our extremely heavy sofa frame in thick plastic.
Talk about spring cleaning to the extreme. 😛
We had researched, and researched some more, how to properly prepare and remove mold from interior water damaged walls. For an abundance of information and step-by-step directions, two good websites on this topic are the CDC and the USEPA. After gingerly removing the walls (the family room side and the opposite garage side), insulation and taking the floor down to the joists; we understood why it costs $1,000s of dollars to have this job professionally done.
Once the nasty work was done the old insulation, hardware, gloves, rags, respirator filters, old clothing and shoes, etc. were double-wrapped in bags and disposed.
We scrubbed the area liberally with a bleach solution. Every 15 minutes we inspected the areas and re-applied the solution until the mold was gone. After many applications, we decided to let it dry overnight and re-inspect in the morning before going further. By Monday night everything looked good. So on to the repair phase and the next dilemma: where will I find panel to match our 50-year-old wood panel sheets?
Always an adventure, right? 😉 Stay tuned!
Family Room: Part 1, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6
Have a good week! – – Joanne
Joanne, i was wondering what you’ve been doing! I have been undoing and fixing all the damage and wear and tear on the building throughout this long, cold winter. Lots of windows to reglaze and paint, etc. Removing moldy drywall is sure no fun, but one January day, I donned all the gear and cleaned the attic (if you want to call it an attic) of bat guano. These kinds of jobs have only one good thing about them and that is that it is nice when they are over. Oh, you’ll be so happy!
Bat guano? Ginene, I just had to laugh (sympathetically) when I read that. I seriously hate to think what may lie hidden behind our other walls. I love living in an older home, issues an all. What plans do you have for your attic?