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Yes, I know that's not healthy.

On Saturday our awesome carpenter TJ had a cancellation, so he came to our house to give us back the mudroom.

You see, the story of the mudroom is a tale as old as, say, the wireless web. Or footless leggings. Once upon a time before we owned the house, there was a concrete patio off the kitchen. Circa 1930's. Well, the home's owners decided to make this patio into a room! (Circa, perhaps 1970's.) Normal people might think to hire a contrator. Do it yourselfers might attempt to build it themselves. But this depression era couple decided to save themselves a lot of time, money, and effort by simply attaching a pre-built shed to the house.

Yes, they just took a shed, plopped it onto the concrete, chopped 1/4 of the roof off so it would line up with the rest of the rooflines, and called it done. We know because of this weird roof line - plus they didn't bother to take the old roof (ie roofing shingles and all that jazz) off of the 1/4 left roof side that is now part of our upstairs attic. (I actually had to do this - imagine me in a dark, small crawl space attic in mid-august 2004, ripping off old roofing. I've never sweat so much in my life.)

Anyway - when it came time to lift the house, our housemover said the concrete slab below the mudroom floor had to be removed - it couldn't be lifted.

So we ripped out the plywood and then jackhammered the concrete until it was far enough gone to be able to lift the mudroom with the rest of the house.

And through these past months, the mudroom has been floorless through the entire procedure. Lift, dig, pour, set, tar, fill. And of course, it's been exposed to the elements.

So TJ came on Saturday to rebuild the floor. Almost right away, he and Mike made a discusting discovery. Moisture had seeped in behind the wainscotting and mold was growing - everywhere! Luckily, the wainscotting was only on the bottom part of the walls, but green and fuzzy drywall is never a healthy site. That's some cancer-causing action right there. They guys immediately removed all the wainscotting but continued building the floor next to mold. Gross.

Mike and I were super busy and lived with the mold until Monday. Couldn't hurt to live with it a couple days, right? Well, on Monday when I walked in, I could smell it. That was it. I grabbed a razor knife and started cutting. Mike gave me a hand and in less than a half hour, all the moldy stuff was in contractor bags and out of the house.

That's some sketchy stuff right there. But boy does it feel good to have the room back. We even moved the washer & drier out of the kitchen! Amazing to have that room sans laundry. No more wash-in kitchen! WooHoo! Hopefully we'll have both machines re-hooked up this weekend.

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