the hazmat house

Well, they found more mold, as I had suspected, in the piano room. Yes, that's the room that I just painted a few weeks ago. And they're going to have to check under the dining room window too...but right now all the furniture from the whole house is in there, so they can't check until all that is moved out.

Here's what the house looked like yesterday. Today they started putting up insulation and I'm assuming some drywall is going up tomorrow. Needless today, I've had more than enough and I'm ready to have my house back. But we still don't know when that will actually happen.

Here's my office/scraproom:

Here's the crazy zipper room that's set up inside our bedroom:
And our bedroom, behind the zipper:
And here's our lovely den, where all of our bedroom furniture is:

the mold patrol

Just when I got the house all organized, the office painted and rearranged, and the closets cleaned out...we're tearing up the house again.

For a long time we've been smelling a funky smell in our house, in certain rooms. We finally narrowed it down to the worst of it being in the 3 rooms that water came in last August during Tropical Storm Fay. To make a long story short, we have mold in the walls. Yuck! Thankfully, the insurance is covering the mold removal, cleanup, and repairs. They are also paying to replace the carpet pad in the 2 rooms and the entire floor in the kitchen. (It's in our bedroom, my office, and the kitchen.)

So today, the mold patrol came to our house. They have put up zippered plastic in all the rooms (just like you would see on "24" or the movie "Outbreak.") And when they are actually removing the mold, they wear HAZMAT suits. It's nuts. So we're without access to those areas for a few days. They started this morning. Unfortunately for them, my office (scrapbook room) is packed full to the brim with all my crafty stuff. They had to pack it all up and move it all out. They are also going to have to move everything out of our bedroom.

Before they moved anything, they had to HEPA vacuum it and get rid of all the dust. But the kitchen is already mold free! Now they just have to replace the insulation, wood beams, drywall, and baseboard in there, and repaint it. They have to remove all of that stuff in all 3 rooms, 4 feet up from the floor. It's craziness! There are also these huge machines that vacuum the air and they have to run 24/7 - so we'll have that going all weekend!

Today, when I came home while they were still working, they told me that it was REALLY bad in the kitchen - there was black mold, green mold, and yellow mold. GROSS!! I'm SO GLAD it's gone - but I really can't wait to get it completely out of the house! I swear I can smell it in the office I just painted too, so they're going to check in here on Monday.

Here are some pictures. I must say, all this does not make me fond of Florida.

Here's the kitchen. Notice that we have no access to the laundry room, so to do laundry I have to go through the garage! Haha!
Here's what you see when you pull back the zipper:
And here's a nice up-close-and-personal behind the zipper:
Here is my quarantined office:
Here's how the den looks with all the office furniture moved in there (in real life the paint is not that bright yellow):
And here's the dining room. Yes, the cats are loving it! They've been climbing all over the place:

more pictures

It's done! It's done! We still have some more things to put on the bookshelves, but the paint is done and the shelves are up and the piano is in place. Whew!

Here's the finished paint job:



Here's my car when I got home from Ikea:


And here's the finished product:

office space

Well well well, I'm not dead after all!

I admit that I've been horrible about blogging AND reading blogs. But I thought I'd give you a quick glimpse into my project right now...it's the "What Miss Kerri does between Kindermusik semesters" project. haha. We're turning our piano room (AKA the room where we put all of our leftover junk that doesn't fit anywhere else) into Brian's office. It will also still serve as a piano room. :)

It had a little boy-ish baseball wallpaper border, which I tediously scraped off yesterday, and it has a chair rail; above the chair rail was dark tan and below is navy below. I have just finished painting the top half a nice aqua color! And after I shower I'm headed to Lowe's to get the teal paint for the bottom half. Anyway, this room had the piano and all my piano and Kindermusik stuff (that's a lot of stuff!), some of Brian's stuff on a tall bookshelf, a huge futon, and 2 file cabinets. Plus other odds and ends.

Brian is on a MAJOR deadline at work, but he got off at the normal time (7:00) on New Year's Eve and we worked ALL NIGHT taking everything out of there and moving it to various other places in the house, as you can see below. We also completely rearranged and organized the closet, and I will take a picture at some point. It makes me VERY happy!




(No, I haven't taken the Christmas stuff down yet...I just jumped right into this project; it's been on my mind for weeks! Plus I like the lights.)

In fact, we worked so much that night that we completely missed midnight and at about 12:30 Brian said, "Oh...happy new year!" That's the first time we haven't seen the ball drop since we've been married, I think! Oh well. Anyway, here you can see the beginning before I started painting, but after I had taken down the stubborn border (ugh!), repaired the wall with spackle, and started taping. Isn't it DARK in there?? I hate it!

When I went to bed last night, I was about halfway done with the upper half of the room, first coat only. I also had a ton of paint in my hair from where I carelessly leaned my head against the wall while working on the trim. *sigh* Anyway, it looked like this:
And today I have finally finished the entire upper half of the room, TWO coats, even! Here it is:



I don't guess you can see the color that well, but it sure is bright and cheery. I'm going to finish the bottom half tonight and then tomorrow I'm headed to Ikea to get the new bookshelves. Brian has to work tomorrow, and he had to work yesterday, too. :( But the good thing is, he gets to see the progress when he comes home at night (at 11:30) and he loves it! I'll keep you posted. And I'll also update you on Christmas sometime. Cheers!