Mold is totally the best...

Well, I'm going to blog now. I tried to post some of this on facebook but it failed for some reason. This seems a little easier.

So 13 days ago (on Wednesday the 17th) Samantha and I took a day off of work to catch up on our cleaning and organizing, we had a big load of stuff from storage that we needed to go through.

While cleaning I noticed a damp spot on the floor in the living room right in front of one of our book shelves.

My immediate reaction to this was "F'ing Cat!" but I smelled it and it didn't really have much of a scent, which means it wasn't the cat lol.

We explored further and it was clear that the base of the book shelf all around it was wet. We cleared things out of the way and moved the book shelf and discovered water damage on it, mold on it and mold on the floor. It was also on the next bookshelf over, which we had laying on its side to use as a shelf behind the couch.

I loved this book case...

This is where the water is on the
Carpet and the Ceiling

This was underneath the bookcase
that was on its side

This is the spot in the Ceiling, you can see a slight discoloration
a few inches to the left of it too, but we didn't notice it... yet

This was under the standing bookshelf

Good view of the underneath of both bookshelves

gross

MOLD

yeah, thats crap

This is the other one, water damage
didn't seem as bad, but it fell apart

We immediately told our Landlord, who is in China until early December. We called the person who he wanted us to contact locally if we had any issues. They came right over to check it out. They made arrangements for someone to come see it. He looked around and didn't really find anything initially. The leak wasn't happening so everything had dried out.

The contractor came back on Saturday the 20th with a couple of helpers and they pulled the carpet back and cut into the wall. They found some wetness and mold beneath the carpet and mold and a lot of dampness behind the wall. But the leak still wasn't happening and they basically wanted us to watch it and let them know when the leak happened again so they could check it out.

Ughh, the electrical outlet...

Wet paper

More wet paper

MOLD II

And wet paper

Water coming down the wall behind the outlet

So we waited, and waited and waited. Finally six or so days later (on Friday the 26th) it got wet. Really wet, you can see some of it up in the pics above. This also happened to be the day we arranged for a Pullman Building Inspector to come by the house. The contractor and our landlord had both indicated that they were going to close the wall up and just wait for the leak to happen in the future, but I wasn't happy with that so I wanted an independent inspector to take a look. coincidentally he came at the right time.

The inspector thinks that while it could be the plumbing it is more likely a leak coming from the roof. We have flat roofs and the timing of the leaks tend to coincide (though not perfectly) with the recent rains we'd been having.

It rained for most of the next several days, until Monday the 29th when it dried up again.The water pretty much remained constant in our living room during that time. Helene's (the people who run the condominium association) had someone take a look at the roof and he said he didn't find any leaks. So they hired a plumber to come check it out.

He came by today and did some checking and is about 99% sure that its not the plumbing. He cut a hole in the ceiling to check things out, after we noticed a new wet spot on the ceiling. Here are some pics!

A nice brand new spot to keep the old spot company

MOLD III

That is a hole in our ceiling

Dry plumbing, wet wood

more dry plumbing, that's my toilet over there.

kinda dirty

So, I've recommended to my landlord that we cut a hole into the wall in the upstairs bathroom so we can more conclusively determine where the water is coming from *cough*the roof*cough* sorry had something in my throat.

So we'll see where that goes.

Unfortunately the bathroom gets used quite a bit, the only shower in the place after all. Also, we have a guest coming soon. Samantha's sister and her baby! Little baby Mathias.

Anyway, good talk.