We finally closed on the house at the beginning of October
and it was time to tackle the mold. I
called on a few companies who specialize in mold so I could get an idea of what
we were dealing with and get some quotes.
One guy showed up without a ladder.
One guy said there was no mold in my attic. One company spent 3.5 hours touching every
corner of the house from attic to crawl space.
Guess which company I went with.
Viking Restoration DKI impressed me with their
knowledge. The quote was 33 pages long and
had pictures of the mold in all of the areas it was found. They discovered rot along with the mold and a
whole lot of rodent damage. The rodent
damage I expected because the entire kitchen was covered – brace yourself and
if you are faint of stomach just skip to the next paragraph – in rodent feces
and urine stains.
I did a lot of research on how to get rid of the rodent
feces and urine stains that covered the kitchen (um, oops, sorry if you jumped
paragraphs). I was prepared to tackle
that job if needed but I’ll save that for another time.
The guys at Viking - Tony the owner, Rory, the amazing Dana, and the always cheery and singing Ken - came through in a big way. They didn't just find the mold. They found why it was growing and detailed
the ways we could keep it at bay in the future.
We agreed that phase one would be remediating the mold and phase two
would be fixing the rot and the areas that were allowing the mold to grow. It was great to know that not only do they
clean up the mold, they fix the problem (as you will hear about in the future
with their radio ads. I know because I’m
a mom and can see into the future.).
This was so reassuring to this Balcony family.
So phase one began.
The ceilings in the upstairs bedrooms came down.
The lower cabinets in the kitchen - and all of that special debris from the rodents - are gone.
This is just a picture of the retro range hood that was unfortunately busted.
Our oil tank just hovers, floating in air connected to the intake tube. It's the kind of oil tank you'd find at Hogwarts but isn't allowed in Muggle homes.
The code officer would have loved this gem. Mix and match electrical in a rusted box. I double dog dare you to touch that! Actually, Kenny had to touch it often and he's still around to tell the tale.
This is more retro than the range hood.
The downstairs laundry room was dismantled.
The moldy refrigerator was tossed into the dumpster.
Things were happening and it looked like it would be under
two months to get us into our new-to-us Maine home.
Then it was decided that the floors had to come up in order
to properly remediate the mold in the crawl space. Um, ok, I guess? And that is when the house of Mice and Mold
began it’s slow unraveling into a gutted shell of a building. The things we found…the laughs we had (what
else can you do in a situation like this.
It’s either laugh or laugh until you pee your pants. I stopped short of peeing because that can be messy)…the horrors we saw…
And that concludes post #2.
Go on with your bad selves.
