Moving to Wordpress

**This is a sticky. It will stay at the top, please scroll down for newer posts. As of March 18, my only new posts to this blog will deal with our toxic mold situation. My regular blog continues at Wordpress.**

This blog was my induction into the blogosphere, and I'm very happy with what I accomplished here. But in the last several months I've learned that there are other blog publishers out there, each with its own pros and cons. Several months ago I found wordpress, and after experimenting with it a bit, I found that it fits my personality and needs better.

So today I say good-bye to Cozy Paradigms at Blogger, and I move to Mudlark Tales at Wordpress. I hope my faithful readership (all 4 of you) will follow me there - in the sense of reading my posts there - I don't expect you all (all 4 of you) to move your blogs there...

The end is in sight!

After **much** ado, there's a new company working on my house right now. (Hip hop background music, me doing a happy dance) The called yesterday and said they were ready to start, and since I'd already obtained copies of their business license and insurance certificate, I happily agreed.

They're at my house now. I'm not. You see, it's not recommended that anyone be home when mold remediators do their work. So I'm at my aunt's house. With my kids, and my hubby will soon join us. The remediation is expected to take only 2 days (only 2 days? I've waited this long for that?). But when they're done, we'll have the added expense of re-testing, putting down new flooring, rebuilding the drywall, and rebuilding the ceiling, though not in that order. We'll paint too, while we're at it.

All that to say, there is (finally) progress. It's just going to take a long, long time to finish.

It's getting Ridiculous!

The lizard in the playroom was a casualty of blue painter's tape. Or maybe, a casualty of toxic mold. We'll never know. He died though, while trying to escape my kids' playroom and return to the 'mold room.' While crossing to the 'other side' he got stuck in the painter's tape and died. Alternatively, he may have died the moment he poked his little head into 'the mold room' and the toxicity killed him. We'll never know. But my hubby is my hero for disposing of him.

We've now had the mold room closed off for nearly 6 weeks. We've gone through contractor 1, contractor 2 stopped returning my calls the moment I asked for a business license and proof of insurance. Tomorrow we have 3 (count them - three!) contractors coming throughout the day to look at the mold room and tell me what they think. Hopefully one of them will be able to produce documentation that they're actually a bona fide business. We'll see. Right now, I have little hope. I'm starting to believe that my home was meant to have a gaping hole in the ceiling, and this is all just a good way to get us closer to nature by inviting otherwise purely outdoor creatures to abide with us.

Sometimes you have to cut and run...

We confronted our mold remediation company - we'll call them company 1 - about the hack of job they did to our home. They apologized. They asked for a 3rd chance. We were willing to offer them a 3rd chance, at their promise to make everything right. But, we said, we had to consult another contractor first. At the mention of another contractor, all the blood drained from the guy's face at Company 1. "What!?" he said. "WHY would you want to do THAT???!!!" Precisely, kind sir, because of the reaction I just witnessed. What are you afraid that I'll learn? That you overcharged me? That you did shoddy work? That all your dealings have been riddled with fraud?

Expecting to hear only one of those things (I'm essentially a trusting optiminst), I was quite surprised when we found all of those things to be true. In fact, as I listened to Company 2 tell me of all the damage Company 1 caused, all their negligence, how ridiculously they had tried to pick my pocket, I felt an intense need to sit down. (Really, it was an intense need to sit down on a beach towel with the calming rush of waves lulling me gently to a place where none of this matters.) I think I need a Bahamavention. (Have you seen the commercials?)

Picking myself back up from a hard wooden chair that really has nothing in common with a beach towel, I made some phone calls. So now, we've hired Company 2. We've also hired a lawyer. We're about to start tense negotiations with Company 1. It's time to put on my game face.

And the boxing gloves come out

We've consulted an attorney. This toxic mold thing has gotten pretty bad. The company that was doing the remediation was unlicensed, uninsured, and they sent some hack to my house who further contaminated the rest of the house. They made the problem worse. It's been a battle. But I've learned things about myself. Things like...

• I negotiate better on the phone - it's easier when I don't have to look into the other person's eyes.
• My Romanian is good enough to understand someone's trying to pull the wool over my eyes.
• It's not good enough to argue well in my own defense.
  
• I have different personalities when I speak different languages. I think it has to do with level of confidence.
  
• I'm more assertive and more thorough when it directly involves my kids. I'll pull out the boxing gloves in their defense.
  
• My hubby and I do a good good-cop bad-cop role. He's the good cop. A nice, quiet good cop. I'm the bad cop. My (former) contractor avoids me because of it.
• I can research just about anything.
  
• My (former) contractor (just fired) thinks I know too much about toxic mold. I think I still have lots to learn.
• I really can trust my gut feeling. I should do it more often.
  

There's a lizard...

... in my playroom. And not a cute little gecko either. He came in through the mold room. Apparently the "airlock" in the room doesn't really keep lizards (or ants, we found yesterday) 'locked' in the room. I suppose if lizards can get through, so can air (and the mold spores)... So, who wants to come over for dinner? Lions and tigers and mold, oh my! (and lizards and spiders and ants too!) Now doesn't that sound pleasant?

And the kicker, we found out today that they aren't insured either! So, the moral of the story at this point, when you hire a contractor, make darn sure you have your own copy of their business license and proof of insurance!

And the saga continues...

So here's the story. I noticed Bean coughing at night and at naptime - basically if she was in her room for any significant amount of time, she coughed. Then I found out (thank you, Extreme Makeover Home Edition) that those symptoms could be caused by toxic mold. I remembered at that point that when we moved into the house, that room had a different smell than the rest of the house and it seems like something was 'off.' The odor had gone away (or been covered up) when we started using the room daily, but I remembered that initial feeling that something wasn't right. So I called around and hired a mold inspector to come out. He took his air samples, sent them off to the lab, and then I got my report - we had stachybotrys in the living room, directly under Bean's bedroom. So, we hired a certified mold remediation company to remove the toxic mold from our 'mold room' (a.k.a., living room) and do the work while we were out of town.

They sent me their estimate and began the work. When we came home after 2 weeks gone, the company had finished their work (so they said) but had to leave that room sealed off until the mold inspector returned to give us an all-clear. I snuck into the room anyhow, and found that there was still toxic mold on the drywall! The company didn't do what they said they would! So they came back, apologized for doing thousands of dollars worth of the wrong work (work that we didn't authorize), and said they'd take care of the problem.

Their phone conversations (in Romanian, which they keep forgetting I speak) say things like, "don't tell the inspector you did that!" and the equivalent of "doh! why did you do that?" They've done some outright dishonest things that make me wonder if we're not the object of some type of fraud.

And the kicker is, today I found out that they let their business license lapse. Their license expired in December. Now, 3 months later, they've just realized it (when I asked to see their license). Sound fishy to you? In the meantime, I'm awaiting the results from my chest x-ray to see if the mold caused any lasting damage... (need I repeat my mantra of 'ewww, gross!'?)

Ewww, gross!

The timeline should have worked out well. We left town for 2 weeks, and the contractors were supposed to use a key we left for them and come and get rid of our toxic mold (eww, gross!). By the time we returned after 2 weeks, the mold would be gone, the drywall would be reconstructed, the air quality inspector would have given us an all clear.

We came back last Thursday. The inspector was scheduled to come shortly after - a bit later than I thought, but no biggy. But then, horror of horrors, I went into our 'mold room' (that's what we'll forever call our formal living room from now on), and found the exact same spot of mold on the wall. So what, for pete's sake, did the contractor do? It turns out they took down a different part of the wall, found no mold, rebuilt the wall, and assumed that was their job - done in its entirety.

So yesterday, the lovely contractor came back, befuddled that there was still mold in my house (and why wouldn't there be, since they didn't remove it?), and did very little work. Today we're waiting on the inspector to come back and tell us the extent of the damage. You can imagine how furious I am. The work they're doing is loud (the machine they use to clean the air while they're working sounds like a jet engine), it's messy, and I constantly feel like they're trying to pull the wool over my eyes. In fact, they said to me that I shouldn't be worried and this isn't a big problem. Then got on cell phones and had a conversation in Rpmanian (assuming that I don't speak Romanian) about how bad it is and how seriously they screwed up. Okay, so I understood every word of it. And now I'm mad. And they work 2 hour days - what's up with that? Who works 2 hour days? It doesn't even qualify as part time! Grr... Anyone else have contractor stories to share?

Mama's intuition

Thank goodness for that little voice inside! Whether you call it a sixth sense, pure intuition, or the whisperings of the spirit, when it speaks, Listen! I noticed that my little girl, Bean, was coughing at night and at naptime. There can be plenty of explanations for that, but something inside me said it was mold. ('eww, gross!') So, the mold inspector came out, we dropped nearly $500 for that, as soon as the suspicion came we moved Bean into Little Man's room.

Some thought I was overreacting - was it really worth moving Bean based on a suspicion, when neither child sleeps well when they're together? And is a mold inspection really worth nearly $500? I'm so glad I did it. There's toxic mold ('eww, gross!') growing in the bay window under Bean's room, and the gases are building up in her room. The moral of the story: Always trust your instinct.

So now, Bean and Little Man will be roommates until the work is done. And the work entails sealing off the area with some sort of 'bubble,' ripping out the ceiling, and then ripping out as much of the wall as necessary to eradicate the mold ('eww gross!).



What really upsets me is that we had 3 contractors come out during the summer to look at the bay window and tell us if there was a leak of some sort or water coming in from somewhere. All 3 contractors showed us different 'possible' problems. Of all 3 of them, no one noticed the gaping hole where the siding wasn't sealed to the bay window. The mold inspector found it. And the gaping hole is so big that you can see into it, from the top of the window to the base of the house. Shouldn't a professional notice something like that?

Ah, the joy of home ownership...

How nice it is to sink our entire paycheck into a money pit! Yes, that's really what a house is anyhow, isn't it? Home sweet home. Okay, so it is the place I brought my children home to after they were born, and it is where I spend the lion's share of my time and energy. But I've just written a check for nearly $500 (!) to a man who came to check for mold. MOLD! (as something inside me says, 'ewww, gross!')

It'll take until the end of the day Tuesday to get the lab results back, but he just showed me what shoddy work the builders did, and what shoddy work the contractors did who repaired things when we bought the house from the previous owners. (Hint: if you're buying a house and the inspector finds problems, negotiate the price of the house so you can have the work done, don't ask the sellers to have fix it!) It seems like pride in workmanship is a thing of the past! (no offense to you honest hard-working contractors out there. but hey! what's up with those other guys who cut corners - literally?)

But now I wait. The good news would be, 'gee, Mrs. C., with all the water damage from shoddy contracts, your house officially has no mold, no lasting damage, and it's all good!'. (Okay God, did you hear that?) The bad news would be that one side of our house is rotted out with toxic mold (again, ewww, gross!), we have to leave immediately so mold remediators can come in and tear down the walls and rebuild them, and oh, homeowners insurance doesn't cover that type of thing.

So, here's waiting until Tuesday.

Edited 3/15/07: The bad news won. We're still tearing down more and more of the wall and ceiling, and oh! by the way, insurance doesn't cover one red cent of it.