Removing Carpet
2005.12.31
I spent some time today cleaning out the gutters, before returning to the basement.
I started pulling the wet carpet up, using a utility knife and a pair of pliers. The smell by now was awful, a combination of mold and (mostly) wet carpet mastic. That stuff has got to be really bad to breathe. The only mask I have is one I bought for woodworking… it is rubber and has a single canister filter in the front. I didn’t know if it would really protect me against mold spores, but some research on the net suggests that the N95 filter is good for this sort of thing. Since the carpet ran under the base molding, I started prying that off. At this point I discovered that the base molding was made of particleboard. Nothing but the best for these guys. Also, it was quite moldy in some places. The drywall behind it, which was not so dry any more, had some black mold spots and was pretty mushy when I was leveraging against it to pry the base molding off. Mmm, toxic black mold, probably stachybotrys or cladosporium.
I removed all the base molding along the south wall, and a strip of carpet along there before stopping for the night.
2006.01.07
After clearing out the wet carpet last weekend, I dug out a little air purifier and deionizer I bought a few years ago, and put it in the back room. I’m somewhat dubious as to the effectiveness of these things, but actually it did seem to help over the next few days. What I really needed to do was rent a high-powered ozone generator, but I couldn’t find one locally and didn’t want to wait for one to ship from a place I found on the internet. So I made do with the little thing I had, and slowly but surely the smell improved. I also had a fan running in there and the wall heater on, so that eventually dried out the carpet mastic, which was the main source of the terrible odor.
Today I extended one of the downspouts.
Wet Basement