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Cancer Wall

Posted: February 27th, 2009 | Author: michael | Filed under: life | Tags: , , | 11 Comments »

We hit our first rip-it-out, sawzall blazing problem in the house, a rotted wall join in the laundry room. Details here. Pics here:

I don’t have pics of the original rot, this is what it looked like after pulling everything out. What you see is post-sawzall, post shop-vac. So, Phil, about that haz-mat suit?

11 Comments on “Cancer Wall”

  1. 1 Daniel Semsen said at 10:05 am on February 27th, 2009:

    Do you need to borrow my Phillips-head screwdriver? I’ve got two!

  2. 2 aly hawkins said at 10:10 am on February 27th, 2009:

    Holy smokes. That is crazy.

    What time are you kids getting started tomorrow (Saturday), Michael? I think we’ll be joining you for some fixer-upper-ness.

  3. 3 Zack said at 11:04 am on February 27th, 2009:

    Wow….not bad. I’ve actually seen worse, believe it or not.

    Aly – if you guys wanna carpool (from my house), let me know. It’ll shave about 25 miles off your already long commute. (And we can get piss-drunk on the way there, too)

  4. 4 Stick said at 12:23 pm on February 27th, 2009:

    Dude. Nevermind the rot. The power socket is upside down. You should just sell the place and be done with it.

  5. 5 sharolyn said at 1:12 pm on February 27th, 2009:

    Stick, in our former house the builder purposely put the socket upside down if it was the one that connected to the light switch. Isn’t that clever?

    Lee Family, I am cheerleading you across the miles. Go, Team, GO!

  6. 6 michael lee said at 5:07 pm on February 27th, 2009:

    We are starting at 8 am. Get there whenever. We’d love to have you.

  7. 7 Eric Haas said at 6:22 am on February 28th, 2009:

    You’re fixing it up before you move in? Impressive. We lived in our last house for 5 years with no ceiling in the dining room. Dinner parties were problematic, as guests’ attentions kept wandering up to the bare lathe with bits of horsehair plaster still clinging on stubbornly. We only managed to finish the “basic” repairs in time to sell it.

  8. 8 michael lee said at 7:13 am on February 28th, 2009:

    We’re doing the repairs in two stages. The first stage is a one-week rip-em-up, paint-it-out, all-hands-on blitz of the major repair work by our good friends and generous family.

    Stage two is a 30-year agonizing death march through the remaining 90% of the to-do list, with no end in sight, and only the intimate awareness of my own failings to keep me company.

  9. 9 sharolyn said at 8:39 am on February 28th, 2009:

    Mike = funny.

  10. 10 harmonicminer said at 7:12 pm on February 28th, 2009:

    Seriously, be sure you get every last bit of the rot. And if there is mold, get it all. Then, when you think you’ve cut/scraped it all out, wipe down the whole zone using commercial bleach…. not Clorox, the real, undiluted stuff you can only use with rubber gloves. Wear breathing protection (not the little white masks, but the over the head double canister style used by pro painters), ventilate while working.

    Then replace whatever is necessary for the structure to stay up and support walls.

    If you miss even a little mold, it has a way of continuing to grow in there, for a long, long, time, then giving you a nice surprise one day.

    Speaking from sad experience.

    I’d bleach Congress if I could.

  11. 11 Steve said at 3:55 pm on March 1st, 2009:

    Generally agree with harmonic miner… though the wimpy clorox will probably work. You could also spray the bleach to reach in little crevices.
    Did you track down the source of the leak?

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