Mold. Lots of mold in our kitchen.

Part of the reason I blog is to document our tortoise-slow progress on renovating our home. When we bought this house we knew it was a project. Jimmy and I absolutely love tackling these things together because I have the vision and he has the ability. We're a great team I think :)

We knew that a kitchen renovation would need to happen eventually but there were so many other things that needed fixing before we could even think about it. And let's be honest. A kitchen reno falls on the higher end of expensive projects.

Fast forward to over a year ago. I started noticing a really strong smell coming from the kitchen somewhere. It was especially strong around the sink and disposal. I tried everything to clean it out. I had even gotten to the point where I was pouring fresh coffee grounds in there to help neutralize the odor. Nothing worked.

We needed to see what we were dealing with so I convinced Jimmy to tear out the bottom of the cabinet underneath our sink.

There it was: black mold. We discovered that there was a leak in our main drain. Each time we turned on the faucet, water poured in from the drywall and down onto the floor.

We had no choice but to close it up and leave it like that for a few weeks and talk about our plan of action. A kitchen tear-out was nowhere near our present thought or budget. We talked about all kinds of potential fixes but nothing that could be immediate.

We called our insurance company and they came out twice. They will not cover this because it's not a catastrophic event. Slow leaks are not covered.

We didn't know anything about this problem through our inspection. It was never mentioned, so we were unaware of anything like this.

The smell kept getting worse until I caved. I couldn't keep putting my family at risk. We spent this past weekend tearing into one half of our kitchen.

We lost our window seat area due to the water seeping under it. 

{old picture}

We ended up tearing out all of the beadboard since it was so poorly done anyway. We found some old paint swatches from the former owner :) 

This is what I'm working with currently. I've lost my dishwasher, tons of cabinet space, lots of hardwoods and my window seat. The white stuff is Kilz. We probably over-did it in the "abatement" process but I'm certain we took care of the mold. I can still smell the bleach in my nose :) Any black on the floor is the paper that was under the hardwoods.

This is honestly a real-life nightmare as far as house problems go. Jimmy's schedule is already so full that this will have to be tackled in between his two job schedules. It's overwhelming to say the least. I'm TRYING to stay positive but the thought of living like this for months on end is daunting.

Here's praying we can get this done within a reasonable timeframe!!