Things that you learn when you hire a contractor....

So our roofers are contractors. Since they are about to wrap up on the roof (fingers crossed for Tuesday!), they did a walk through today to give us a few quotes for things that need to be done by a professional inside. We are still gone, so my mom was there to take them through. Here's what we learned:

1) The mold room has to be gutted. We knew that, but we basically need to get the mold cut out, have it room treated, and then can drywall. We also need to gut the closet, which has almost gutted itself:




Let's just say we didn't a professional for that assessment.

2) We have two more closets that have to be gutted. This was actually good to know. One is the closet in the apartment that we discovered post-closing. Apparently, there isn't that much mold, but this was under a flat roof (where they had the spiral staircase outside) and all of the wood is rotted/wet


The second is in the yellow bedroom upstairs (the one that has served as storage for the massive air conditioner over the past few week). We knew there was water damage, but it's pretty bad:



3) The two air conditioners that they cut through the side of the house will just be sealed by wood for now. They swear it will be water tight and then we'll have to get matching wood for the siding later. Practical, but not too attractive (although, neither is the entire outside of the house at this point in time, so it doesn't really matter).

4) The wall behind the sheep paper is plywood. Painted plywood. Not drywall or plaster. Sigh. So, we need to do something to that wall. Here is that wall again:



Weird.

Some people are asking us what our plan is. That's a really good question. Right now, our plan is to make the downstairs as liveable as possible so that we can move in. I think that means peeling all wallpaper, washing walls, re-plastering/drywalling/sanding, etc, then peeling up carpet and finishing the floors (as well as all mold/water damage removal). Alok thinks that as soon as the roof is done and the mold is gone, we can move in. Even though we can live in the separate apartment area, I can't imagine the allergens that would be flowing through the air while we sand, rip up carpet. We just need to work faster. Our goal is to be there within 30 days. Do you think we can make it? Probably not, but we'll see.

We'll post more progress on Monday.

Jessica