Home remodeling blues
So much for the awesome hardwood I had hoped was underneath the dining room carpet.
And in the hallway.
I shudder to think what we’re going to find when we eventually take up the dog-poop-brown carpet in the living room. Maybe it will be so horrifyingly retro that it will be fashionable again. That’s sort of the strategy I’m going for with the stairway carpet in the top photo.
PS: my cat is a camera whore.
Could be worse: we found crumbling asbestos tile in our bathroom when we replaced the old sink cabinet. Fun times!
Comment by mpclemens — February 12, 2009 @ 5:13 pm
I actually had a brand new house built, and a couple of years later the floor in the upstairs bathroom began to go all soft. I had it inspected, and it turned out that the installer hadn’t put in the required 1.5 wax rings under the toilet, just one.
So over the course of a couple of years “black” water was seeping into the space in between the floor, causing toxic mold. It was fixed for free, but took up the only bathroom with a shower for over a week.
Isn’t home ownership fun?
Comment by Mike.Speegle — February 12, 2009 @ 11:02 pm
Mike #1: I’m sure the tiles contain asbestos (I’m guessing these date from when that end of the house was added on in ‘58). But lino asbestos is non-friable and not a hazard so long as you don’t grind ‘em up and inhale the debris. We do have some asbestos insulating a furnace pipe in the basement, but again, as long as it’s undisturbed, it’s ok.
There’s a lot of misinformation about asbestos, causing many people to needlessly freak out about it. Basically, don’t shove it up your nose and it won’t hurt you. Secondhand smoke is way more harmful in the long run.
Mike #2: Yikes! I’m glad nobody got sick! When I was a kid, a ceiling in our house collapsed due to a toilet leak. Fortunately, the leak was from the incoming water pipe and not outgoing “black” water. Things got very wet, but no major harm done. On the plus side, it got rid of the ugly sheetrock ceiling right quick.
Comment by olivander — February 13, 2009 @ 9:21 am
The biggest freak-out was just that we had little ‘uns running around at the time, so we sealed up the bathroom until we solved the problem. At no time were any of us tempted to jam tile bits in our noses.
We used squares of asbestos in high school chem. lab all the time without freaking out, but somehow having your own kids around the stuff made it a bit worse.
Comment by mpclemens — February 13, 2009 @ 10:39 am
I used to be freaked out by asbestos, too, until my wife found out that the wedding chapel that all of her family friends had worked at for years was practically built out of the stuff. Yeah, I guess so long as you don’t antagonize it (or jam it up your nose), you should be good.
BUT…the kid stuff is freaky. I, Super Paranoid Man, ran my son in for a checkup after we found out about the mold. The doc rolled her eyes at me and told me to relax.
Come to think of it, there was a mold scare in MY high school chem and anatomy lab. Freaky.
Comment by Mike.Speegle — February 13, 2009 @ 11:31 am