The itch for demolition

Every day we're surrounded by everything we know that needs to be done... And the waiting is torture. Dave couldn't take it anymore. I found him near the back door with a hammer and chisel removing baseboards.

Doing the demolition work ourselves will save money in the long run. And of course it all has to come down at some point anyway -- so it wasn't long before I joined him. Once the first baseboard was removed -- we realized that we have every reason to be antsy.

The picture doesn't do it justice -- but that's mold. Mold. Mildew. Goop. This isn't mold-stained sheetrock... this is actively growing mold... complete with grey fuzzy stuff and wispy black spores. The really good stuff. So I sit here typing this while nursing a headache and think we've figured out why we've had so many mysterious ailments for the last 8 months.....


Now before any of you think we had gone totally mad for not having this stuff removed immediately... I should remind you that we hired 'professionals' for the task of mold remediation and 'flood restoration' a mere two weeks after Hurricane Katrina struck. (A little about our flood restoration specialists.) When these guys assured us that it was not necessary to remove all of our sheetrock as long as they could fish the insulation out from the exterior walls... or as long as the sheetrock from one side of a given wall was removed... we thought that sounded great. To be totally honest - we were thrilled that we didn't lose all of our walls or all of our trim and baseboards... It was absolutely painful to rip up the house back then, you see.

Now, it says here on our receipt "Guarantee odor free, mold below toxic levels". I wish I knew what exactly was meant by toxic levels -- but I can tell you at the time I assumed that would mean mold would not begin to actively grow on the remaining sheetrock and trim within a couple of months. Oh and look -- on the very same receipt, down near the bottom it reads: "Total Amount: $8000.00" Ah... I'm overwhelmed with warm and fuzzy feelings at the moment.

But I'll try to keep typing.

Now knowing what actually should have been done months ago -- and far less emotional about doing it -- we're going to spend the next week or so taking out the remaining tainted trim and baseboards. Depending on just how confident we feel after that (or depending on how much longer we have to wait) we may also remove the sheetrock that was left behind ourselves.


We also started ripping up the floor in the kitchen closet which smelled horrible. I just realized that there is no way the floor was ever scrubbed with 'several applications of EPA Registered sanitizer' as the restoration receipt claimed -- as that room was used by the crew to store our kitchen drawers and such while they were working in the rest of the house. Hmm.. come to think of it.. that means the drawers weren't scrubbed either since they were left in the closet full of whatever had to be pulled off of shelves during clean up. Not that it would have mattered much... our kitchen cabinets weren't hidden in a closet -- but I had to scrub those out myself after the crew left. Unfortunately, there are many areas that no one can reach without pulling the cabinets out completely.

That's all fine and dandy since the cabinets should have come out anyway.

Oh if we had known then what we know now!

You see... rather than pulling out our kitchen and bathroom cabinets (since it was the nice thing to do for us -- trying to save our cabinets) as part of the service provided for eight-thousand dollars... Our crew simply cut out a swath of sheetrock immediately above or around the cabinets and fished any insulation on outside walls out from behind the cabinets. That sounded like a great idea to us at the time because HEY we had never lived through a flood before....
But the problem is... the old sheetrock remains behind and attached to those cabinets. You know -- the old sheetrock that was soaked in filthy, sewage-laden floodwater? Yeah that's still back there. No wonder I spend some afternoons running around the house lighting incense and wondering why the place still smells like dirty socks.

So much for the professionals.

Dave just asked me how it felt to take a few steps back. We have spent the last three months rejoicing over having walls again.. and soon.. very soon we will be missing a few yet again. But you know something? It's okay this time. We needed the break - but it's really okay. What's a little sheetrock in the grand scheme of things anyway? So I told him -- it feels kind of good.

We both agreed -- it certainly feels better than nothing at all.