February 2, 2020 2 min to read
Flipping disaster: a black-mold-ridden home
Category : Home and Garden
Walk onto the scene of any house flip and assuming the project is going halfway well you’ll hear the sound of change. Drills will be whirring. Circular saws will be slicing through planks with a punctuating high pitch as each cut is complete. But, our flip had a much different sound.
What sound does a commercial air scrubber make?
There’s a phrase I’d never think I would say. Our contractor answered it for me. “It’s not wet inside the walls anymore luckily” the conversation began.
We had moved on to employing a handful of the best air scrubbers money can buy to remove invisible airborne particles and mold spores from the premises.
That was the sound. Air scrubbers. It doesn’t sound like any of the highly productive whirring and slicing. It’s just a mind numbing humming sound that doesn’t quit.
And, our home flip looked less like a Bob Villa production and far more like an episode of the X Files.
Men in white (toxic black mold suits)
A crew in what we now all-to-well know to be Tyvek white suits wearing (what we have also come to know and wear ourselves) and N95 respirators were in control of this unanticipated project phase.
It has a name that just makes you feel like something has gone completely wrong: mold remediation.
How did we end up in toxic black mold hell?
Let’s back up a bit. My husband and I love those shows on cable TV where couples flip homes. It’s incredible to see the transformation that takes place.
A once run-down, banal home becomes a paparazzi-worthy place to live that not only looks amazing, but was also a profitable business venture on top of it all.
Well, we’ve got a tail to tell, too. This one is a bit less fun than picking out new flooring, countertops, paint and tile only to later deposit a fat check into a bank account.
Black mold: Home-flipping horror of horrors
Every home purchase has risks. And, watching the flipping shows, there’s always a handful of roadblocks that must be overcome.
These common challenges to overcome often include phrases like remove this wall, expand this space, not up-to-code and the all-to-common re words (as in reinstall or repaint). But, you rarely hear our much bigger hassle: toxic black mold.
In fact, our challenge-of-challenges started with one of those common phrases: remove this wall. Yeah, it’s a mainstay on those…
Continue reading the article and learn more about mold on Life Is An Episode website.