MOLD

So, our little Natey-Bug turns 1 this month and like all good parents we planned a first birthday party for him. We thought it would be small gathering but somehow the guest list ballooned to 57 people. Oh well, right? He only turns one once.

We were starting to get the house ready for this party when we decided that it was time to take down the wallpaper in our family room and repaint. Some of the wallpaper had fallen down over the summer so the room looked a little shoddy. We decided to do it this week. I took a few days off from work, we lined up the painter, we were ready to go.

Sunday night hubby and I were clearing out the family room, moving furniture to the center of the room, putting Nate's toys upstairs when we decided to pull more wall paper off the wall. It is UGLY wall paper and I was so excited to see it go that I grabbed a corner that was peeling and pulled... it should have been a wonderfully cathartic moment, a cleansing moment really, out with the old, in with the new, a rebirth if you want to take it that far. IT WAS NONE OF THAT because under that butt ugly wall paper was... M O L D.

When I took down that section of wall paper I had uncovered a big section of mold on the drywall. Hubby proceeded to take down the rest of the paper on that wall to find the entire 23 feet stained with mold. Oh crap! what now!

First I canceled the painters... well, put them on hold really. Then we called out insurance company (THANK GOD for the mold rider) and started calling mold remediation companies. We also relocated Nate's birthday party to my mother-in-law's house.

So tomorrow the demolition begins. My family room will be turned into a hot zone and the walls taken down to the studs. After the demo and cleaning is finished we have to find someone to put the dry wall/sheet rock (is there a difference?) back up. Only then can we have the room painted.

This is not the planning and preparation I thought I would have to do for a first birthday party but it will make it a memorable one.

So tomorrow