Given how much HGTV I have watched in my life, you would think that “expect the unexpected” would be my motto. You, my friend, would be so very wrong because the last thing that I expected to expect unexpectedly (did you follow that?) was mold. Yep, the “m” word that sends shivers down the spines of homeowners everywhere. I don’t know why the thought didn’t cross my mind (please try to contain your disappointment Hilary, Jonathan, and Scott) but I was completely caught off guard.
Let’s rewind a bit so you can get the full story. One night last week, after tasting some beer and scarfing down some sammies, we decided to be productive and remove the old toilet in the half bath so that I could finish getting all of the tile and mortar out. We figured we could get everything cleaned out so that Saturday morning we could patch and paint before starting the new tile floor.
Removing the toilet was actually way easier than I thought it would be – this must have lulled me into a false sense of security.
As I started to remove the last wall and a half of tile trim, I found it. A whole village of mold expanding almost the full length of one wall and half of another. Luckily for us, it seemed to be contained to the bottom few inches of drywall. After sending pictures to a contractor friend of ours, we headed to Home Depot to buy one of these lovely respirators. At that point it was almost 10:00 on a weeknight so we decided to attack the wall with bleach for a little piece of mind until we could tackle the problem in full force.
Over the weekend, we finished taking all of the tile and mortar out and then cut out a wall and a half of drywall going up as far as 4ft so that we were extra sure we got it all. We then sanded anywhere that had been in contact with the moldy drywall and used some Kilz primer over it for good measure.
We were lucky enough that the cause was the old toilet not being properly installed so at least there was no leak that needed to be found and fixed. Unluckily, we ran out of time over the weekend so the time line for the project is a little longer than we had hoped.
Here’s to hoping that it’s all worth it in the end and we don’t royally screw something up!
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