What's So Funny?: October 2011

Last spring, we found some mold behind our couch in the basement. We found an empty sippy cup behind the couch, so we thought we had found the culprit. We cleaned up the mold. We were however a bit puzzled by the soft spot in our wall. We had a 4 inch circle of softened wall; again we thought it had something to do with the spilled sippy cup. There were no other wet spots on the wall, and the hole was dry on the inside.

Flash forward to September, I was vacuuming the basement, and I noticed more mold on the baseboards but the opposite side of basement. We had a carpet guy come and look at the mold. He told us it was black mold and to call our insurance. There had to be a leak somewhere causing the mold. The insurance asked us to hire a plumber to diagnose the leak problem. The plumber found the problem easy enough. The drainage pipe from our kitchen sink was leaking either from settling of the house or improper installation. Water was running outside of the pipe causing mold in the insulation, sheet rock, baseboards, and now the carpet. He replaced the entire pipe for us very quickly. The adjustor for the insurance company came out the next day to look at the damage. Then we waited. Due to the storms on the East coast. We were a low priority for processing. Finally we found out we had a claim, and the insurance would help us pay for the mold clean up and repairs.

We called a mold clean-up company. They came out and gave us a bid. The company had 2 teams at our house within 2 hours. They had all of the clean-up finished by 5:00 that day. It was a whirlwind of a day. Pouring ran outside of course. I asked the mold company to look at the girl's room also. We had some mold issues 2 years ago after Emmy spilled a humidifier. We had a carpet person come in and kill the mold, but I was never convinced it was all taken care of. The mold company found mold under the carpet, behind the baseboards, and behind the sheet rock. So the girl's room was cleaned up the same day as the living room. The clean-up team helped me move the girl's bunk beds into Eve's room. The girls all slept in the same room for the last 3 weeks while we had our basement put back together.

We had hired a handyman friend to do the repairs. It was a slow process, but he does really great work. We had a great time picking out new carpet; something that we like and will wear well. The carpet was finally installed yesterday and finished today. We have doubled the size of our house. We are so excited to move back into our basement. We were able to move the girl's rooms last night. Emmy has asked to have her own room. She will be in the green room. Alison and Eve will be sharing the new and improved purple room. Alison picked out the new color. Purple is her favorite color, and I think she picked out a great shade of purple. We found a great little sectional on KSL last week. Our old couches had mold on them. We didn't want to pay the $300 to have them cleaned. We wanted to put that money towards something new. So, tonight we plan on moving our basement furniture out of the garage and back into the basement. I'm excited to be able to park my car back in the garage. I'm so glad that the weather has been beautiful.

Here are some pictures of the entire process. The only great thing about this whole thing is the new carpet. It is so nice to get rid of the old, yucky carpet. The new paint is fun also. Everything feels new and fresh.