Christmas Mold

Hello! Just popping in with a quick Christmas Mold update (as I know y'all are waiting anxiously to know about our fungi problem!). Well, after a consultation with Brian's brother who is Mr. Architect and a mold remediation man (#2), it seems that the moisture problem in the basement is due to the way the builders wrapped the Tyvek around the house near the ground (to guide the moisture right into the basement area) and the wrong way they installed the windows.

Mr. Mold Remediation Man recommended we tear off all the siding on the house and re-do it properly. So, right now we are coming out of the shock of that and trying to decide if we *really* need to be that drastic. And it's winter and the thought of having the whole house without siding is a bit much. If we were younger, we would have had that siding off the next day...but now we try to think about things that involve lots of money and manual labor first.

In the meantime we have a dehumidifier in the basement- it filled up halfway full (it holds a gallon) in *one* day. We heard that's a lot.

I smile (or cringe, cry, wring hands?) when I think about our efforts to humidify the air last winter. I think Jacob's dry hands were due to the *mold* and not dry air (since we obviously had a tropical rain forest going on in our basement).

If we are successful at getting the air dry enough, we can begin to address the mold growing on the floor joists and in the crawl space (wood above it). Guess what Brian will be doing over his Christmas break?