Finding mold growing in your attic or under the stairs is something I hope less people have to go through, especially as we develop miniature drones in the future that are able to detect signs of mold growth in our home before the mold becomes a problem for our family’s health. But we’re not there yet, and so we still rely on human professionals and remediation specialists to test and detect mold spores for us. God bless them. Now, assuming you already got your home mold problem remediated, what’s the next step?
For many home owners and renters alike, the next step after getting all your floorboards ripped up or your drywall sledge-hammered down after a full mold removal, is redesigning and restoring your living space, because comfort is important. As a professional designer I hope we can all agree on that.
Comfort is important! At least it is for those of us who aren’t burly lumberjacks, construction workers or those who are honest with ourselves. Honestly, I’m jealous of people who don’t need comfort in there lives. But I’m not here to give a lecture on how some people may find comfort in discomfort. I’m here to talk about how you, as someone who just got their home ripped apart due to mold removal, can take healthy steps to make their home not only comfortable again but unique from what it was before!
To start, before I start assuming things about you, I want to supply a real-life example. Over in Victoria, B.C., Canada, a dear friend of mine, and their family, received a full mold remediation service. Once the job was done, which they were grateful for, they saw their house in chaos. Half their drywall was in tarps in the back yard. Their floorboards were in pieces in garbage bags. They wished they could take a deep breath and watch a movie, but they knew there was no way they could ever enjoy a movie until their living room was restored and renovated into something comfortable.
The steps this family took next is the inspiration for me ever writing this blog post in the first place. What they did wasn’t amazing. It wasn’t brave. But it was very, very intelligent, and it might be exactly what you need to imitate if you’re reading this hoping to find a way to restore some comfort in your home after having the mold remediation team steamroll through everything you once held dear. Not to become dramatic or exaggerate, but this is what they did:
They hired a renovation contractor, but only after drawing up, as a family, exactly what they all agreed on what their new living room should look like in order to serve the best function each family member needed the space for. In a lot of ways, they reminded me of the Swiss Family Robinson, making lemonade out of lemons. Not only did they agree as a family on coughing up the expenses so they could hire a renovation contractor to repair their home, they all, together, agreed on what exactly the renovation contractor was going to make their living room look like. What they agreed on changed their lives forever–the functions their living room would be designed to fulfil: being a family, together.
Three daughters, each barely yet teenagers; one son, practically a grown man but yet immature; two small dogs and one big, burly cat, not to mention a loving couple, pa and ma. They all came together with a plan to paint one wall pink, one wall blue, one wall red and the last, largest wall they left alone so that they could paint it themselves–something that turned out to be a wild abstract painting of bizarre, modern sorts. New floorboards, new furniture, and by the time they had everything in order they fired the contractor because he was only slowing them down.
This example is what worked for a healthy family, but forget whoever you may be! I’m writing this as a depressed and lonely single person. With that said I can see how this strategy might work for even me and my vintage condo. Therefore, I only look at mold removal as an excuse to completely upend everything I grew to consider normal and start afresh.
So if you’re wondering what to do now that a remediation specialist is ripping apart your home, killing mold with their special mold-killing formula, I simply recommend that you take something from this beautiful example. It might be that you think it’s stupid. You might never consider firing an expertly educated renovation contractor. Or you might want to take things into your own hands and see the silver lining in the situation, because we only live once. In other words, depending on your situation, this might be your chance to start afresh.
