Are You Kidding Me?

Owning a home is quite a luxury. It is the American dream. I remember living in an apartment and thinking how wonderful it would be to own our own home. Then our dream came true and the first couple of years it was great. We painted and decorated the way we wanted. No big deal I thought. HA! Is all I have to say now.

Let me just say that I know there are people that do not have the luxury of having their own home and I hope to not come across as ungrateful, because that is not my intention of this post. I am thankful for our house and that our boys can make as much noise as they possibly can at times and we don't have to worry about the neighbors hearing them. I am thankful that I can decorate and paint walls purple if I want (not that I want to!). However, I don't think I am alone when I say that owning a house can be a pain in the rear. I am having one of those moments.

We have an older home. We need new pipes, because ours tend to leak at times. We need a new kitchen because we have the original cabinets and some of the paint tends to flake off in some of them (I do not use those cabinets at all...there is only 1 that does this). I try to make our house as nice as possible working around these problems. But here is the kicker...

A couple of weeks ago, I took notice of the far back wall in our basement. It looks like the paint is pealing and it looks awfully dirty. I am not the type of person who likes basements. Ours is nice but not redone by any means. So, you will understand after these next few sentences why I hate our basement today. Any ways, Dustin and I were both down in the basement at the same time and we began to talk about this back wall and how "weird" it looks. We weren't sure if it was just dirt or if it may be some sort of mold. We knew there was another area of our basement that should be looked at due to some water leaking into our basement quite a while ago. So, we made the appointment to have a mold company come and look at the two spots in our basement.

The nice man came last week and said that the one wall was definetly mold and that the other wall just needed to be cleaned and treated. I asked if he thought the mold looked like the "bad" mold. He said no, but that he has been wrong before. We were to get the results today.

We got the results alright and IT IS THE BAD, TOXIC MOLD!! Are you kidding me? We spent $190 last week just to have the man come out and look at it and then take a sample to be tested! Today, he came back out to check the air quality of our house. Each sample is $125. He tested all of our floors that total 3. This means we spent another $375 today! Again, are you kidding me? None of this money will go to fix our mold problem.

So, now we wait another 2 days to see if the mold spores are in the air throughout our house. If it isn't then we are O. K. and will have to pay to have the basement wall cleaned and treated. It the mold spores are in the air, then we are talking BIG money. I was told briefly that every horizontal and vertical surface in our house will have to be wiped down with some special rag or something. Then our furniture and beds will have to be treated or vacuumed or something. Once again, are you kidding me? I have packed up the boys and our bags and am heading out until we get our results. We are not taking any chances.

Apparently the reason for our mold is that our down spouts from our gutters don't extend out enough into our backyard. So when it rains all of that rain water is going straight down into the foundation wall of our basement. I think I am saying that right, but who knows!

Right now I am trying to make light of the situation because I have cried too much today at the seriousness of it all. I thank God that that none of us are showing any signs of reactions to the mold, which is a good thing. I called our pediatrician today to just make sure that I don't need to do anything else with the boys. So, please pray that the mold spores have not spread to the air or whatever it does and that we won't have to come up with thousands of dollars that we don't have, like most other people in the economy today. This truly is a nightmare and again I am praying that our air quality is good.

Here is my advice...If something looks wierd, have it looked at! I know a good mold company you can call! : )