Since moving to South Carolina from NYC 6 years ago, our family moved out of 2 homes with water intrusion and mold issues before buying our first home in Summerville. We are a mostly natural-minded family of 6, living a low-tox lifestyle (which likely saved our health) so when I followed our home inspector around to make sure his moisture meter checked all the nooks and crannies, we finally thought we were moving our children into a safe and healthy home. 

 

We came home from a trip and found that the dehumidifier failed on our brand new a/c.  This led us to uncover a multi-system failure and toxic mold destroying the integrity of our home. For months, every waking moment was a living nightmare for our family. After countless hours of research, we decided to follow the functional medicine best practice recommendations for removing and remediating mold; essentially gutted our entire home and unfortunately threw away the majority of our belongings. 

 

Someone had spray painted inside each of the hvac registers to cover up the mold growth- we found chipped paint and painted drywall debris in the duct work all covered in mold. When we started to open up the walls and ceilings to remove and replace the ductwork, we found several instances of previous floods and leaks that went unmitigated and improperly remediated. Apparently, when the old homeowners had their roof replaced, the company that did it never installed flashing around the roof of the screen porch so there was an actual hole from our master bathroom to the outside, covered in black mold growth. 

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None of us were having any mold symptoms until we gutted the master bathroom. We were all sleeping in the master because we had already gutted most of the main floor and the children's bedrooms- but when we found that huge wall of black mold, my husband and one daughter started getting sick. Thats when we decided to move out and into Nanny and Poppy's house until we could safely remove the rest of the mold. 

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Experiencing a moldy home is one of the worst things we've ever been through. It's emotionally traumatizing, exhausting, financially draining and seems never ending. Looking back on the last 2 years, I often say "I wish I hired a mold dog, maybe we could have saved the house-the toys-the books!!" Discovering you are living in mold is heart breaking; I'm hoping to heal parts of my own heart by helping your family heal, too. 

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Moldy-Things we became experts on, that you can ask me more about:

- Why did we gut the entire interior of our home?

- Why did we decide to throw out all out mattresses, pillows, bedding, linens and most clothing we owned?

- Why I'll never keep another cardboard box in my attic?

- What did we do with our books, pictures and albums?

- What about the children's toys?

- How did we wash the clothes we decided to keep?

- How did I heal my families gut post remediation?

- Are we dealing with any continued signs of mold sickness?

- Clean air machines, bleach/peroxide/decon etc. 

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