Day One-thirty-three: Dr. Fleming is this yours?

Not satisfied with our little Home Depot mold test--which only tells you about the presence of mold spores and not how bad the situation is, what kind of mold you have, or how the indoor mold level compares to the surrounding environment--we had a mold expert come by this week. The good news was that in his two hours of digging and discussing he couldn't find very much mold and thought much of what we were already doing or had planned would remediate any lingering problems.


He did peel back the baseboard off a basement wall that runs along the front of the house. He thought there was some mold but couldn't quite tell without tearing open the wall, which he was loathe to do. Fortunately, we own the place and have no such inhibitions (anyway we prefer the cinder block/cement look in the basement, in part to remove areas where humidity can collect and nurture mold). So with our trusty hammer, pry bar, and screwdriver we took down the panelling on that wall. Of the roughly 25 feet width, there was one 4-foot panel that showed obvious signs of mold. It happens to be directly below the front door, porch, and walkway. We already know that the walkway has settled and opened a gap between it and the porch and are planning to fix this.

The good news is that after getting an estimated 3 inches of steady rain on Saturday and Sunday there were no signs of water/dampness on the cinder block wall. How do we know? We taped a half-dozen pieces of painter's paper (what many tape down in lieu of drop cloths) to the wall behind where the mold was worst and as of this morning that paper was dry as a bone.