Ewwww

ShopRite

• 5 Philadelphia Cream Cheese Tubs (8 oz) $2.50 each, got back $3 Dollar Days catalina (weekly deal), $4 Kraft catalina and $3 Philly catalina = $2.50 or $0.50 each
• 4 Breyers Yo Crunch Yogurts $0.50 each, used four $0.29 coupons (Leap Year printable, no longer available) = FREE
• SR Swiss Cheese $2.99
• Babybel Cheese (couldn't resist) $2.79
• Used two $5 catalinas, total was $8.28

Got a catalina advertisement the other day about Yo Crunch yogurt.  It says that you'll get back $2 for every $15 in YoCrunch yogurt you buy (limit 3) between now and 9/19/12.  It says it will be tracked by your frequent shopper card.  Interesting!

Da boyfriend decided to surprise me the other day while I was out by taking off the rest of the dark brown paneling in the house.  The stairs leading off our kitchen are now nice and bright.  We'll do some painting eventually, but for now, its so nice to have spaces brightened up.

We didn't expect any problems with these walls because when the electrician removed a sheet of paneling back in November, the wall behind it was just fine (above).

This wall looks great!  All it needs is some scrubbing and a touch of paint.  But sadly, that was not the case with all the walls.

Ewww.  Now its always smelled a wee bit funky down here, but we attributed it to the dampness of being a semi-basement.  Plus the folks we bought the home from were older and hadn't been able to give certain parts of the house the good scrubbing they needed.  

DBF found mold behind every sheet of paneling on an interior wall.  We think the moisture from the nearby shower (no vent in the bathroom) must have built up behind the paneling and grown some fuzzies.  Its interesting that its not on any exterior walls, but maybe those were too cold for the mold to grow.  Who knows.

On the one hand, having the paneling up kept the smell at bay and protected all the stuff we had in those rooms from the mold.  On the other hand, who knows how long this has been growing since it was hidden behind the paneling.  Now that the paneling is down, the smell isn't pretty.  We have the doors to these rooms shut so Gigi and Shadow can't get in here.

We sprayed peroxide on the walls to keep the mold from spreading and we have a company coming out on Tuesday to thoroughly clean the walls and spray a protective foam to keep this from happening again.  We're also getting a whole-house dehumidifier which should help out a great deal with the dampness on this level of the house. I can't wait.  I get the heebie jeebies just looking into these rooms.

As if that wasn't bad enough, the walls in the stockpile room are pretty messed up.  DBF is thinking he's going to have to spackle the whole room before we can paint.

And when DBF stripped off the moulding, the walls behind it were terrible.

Luckily, the company assured us that its not necessary to move everything out of the rooms for them to do their job (thank heavens).  We just had to smoosh all the stuff into the middle of the room so they have enough space to get to each wall.  Luckily, due to some hungry mice when we first moved in, I'd put all the food down here into plastic totes against a non-moldy wall. But still, I'll feel a lot better when everything is cleaned and we've got the dehumidifier going.

Oy. 

And take a look at this!  A whole in the wall leading from one room the other.  It was covered by some tape and then they slapped the moulding on top.  We definitely have our work cut out for us.