When we bought our house a year and a half ago, the inspector told us we had some mold in the attic. He said all attics have some mold, it wasn't super-serious, but we should call someone and get it cleaned at some point. He also told us our bathroom fan is vented *into* the attic, not out of the house, and that should get fixed at some point too.
Fast-forward to a few weeks ago when we sloth-esque first-time home-owners finally get around to dealing with some of these little issues. The mold dude looks in the attic and says the amount of mold is so extensive that remediation isn't even worth it, it would be cheaper to replace the entire roof, all the way down to the plywood. *Gulp.* Then the roofer comes out, takes one look up there and almost shits a brick. That's never good. When the roof was replaced 7 years ago, they pushed the insulation all the way down into the soffit vents. There is no ridge vent. Even though we don't turn the fan in the bathroom on, the vents are there and all that moisture has to go somewhere... So we have an attic full of moisture from our nice long steamy showers and baths, and absolutely no ventilation up there to get the moisture back out. Recipe for toxic air. Toxic air that we and our infant daughter are breathing. Next week we will be the proud (and financially strapped) owners of a shiny new roof. Then after that's done, the mold dude comes back and kicks us out of the house for a couple days so they can do some crazy enzyme fog that will eat all the kajillion evil little mold spores that live in our house.
But that's not enough. No no no. The weekend before last, the whole downstairs of our raised ranch flooded. The first time there's been even a drop of water down there since we moved in. It was some freak situation with the frozen ground and flash-flood rains... It sucked. We spent a Friday night shop-vac'ing water from the utility room floor, throwing out LOTS of (thankfully not valuable) wet belongings, and trying to sop up as much water as possible from the carpet in the family room. The next day we had guys out there ripping up the carpet, taking out any padding that was damaged, putting in fans and a massive dehumidifier... A few days later they put down new padding, relaid the carpet and cleaned it.
Then a few days later the dryer went on the fritz.
These things happen in threes, right? So nothing else in our house is going to blow anytime soon, RIGHT??? Knock on wood...
2 comments:
Yuck! Those are the times that I'm glad that we rent and not own... but I think that in the long run, owning is always better. Here's hoping for easier (and less expensive) times!
What a pain! Such are the growing pains with homeownership, eh? I bet it'll feel great knowing you're mold-free once it's all over though.
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