Toxic House

It looks like the new House of B is rapidly descending into a disaster ☹ Despite our best intentions, it would appear that we have bought a toxic house. The previous owners went to extraordinary lengths to hide a substantial mold problem. And the more we uncover the worst it seems to get.

So far we are unable to use the master bedroom. Initially we “only” found a bad mold patch on the ceiling in a wardrobe. But on pulling the wardrobe out to address the problem, we have discovered mold on the entire wall as well, and in the insulation. So all has been pulled out. And on pulling out a wooden wall in the same room, we have discovered substantial mold all over that wall too.

So all the walls in the room are going to be pulled out today (thanks Mr B!!).

The irony is when we went looking for a new house we were looking to avoid mold due to Mr B’s asthma and Little B’s allergies. We turned this house over from top to bottom but the owners had hidden the mold problem with wooden overlays, chest of drawers and other creative ways.

Another bedroom has another wardrobe riddled with mold as well. But this is from what we assume to be a leaking shower wall. Again this room cannot be used it smells so bad. But it will require a greater level of correction than the master bedroom and having not spoken to a plumber yet, our greatest fear is that the bathroom will need to be torn out as well.

So in the interim, we are:
• ripping out and correcting what we can afford to correct,
• a dear friend gave us a Kentia Palm as a house warming gift due to its ability to remove toxins from the air. This is currently in the worst room and we are looking at getting some more for other rooms,
• HEPA type filters in the ducted heating vents,
• Sealing up all gaps in the architraves etc to prevent toxic air entering our main living areas,

And as a last resort I am looking into getting a mold toxicologist in as I am quite scared that this amount of mold could be doing serious damage to our health ☹ It might be that we cant live here until it is fixed.