Growing up as a latch key kid meant that I watched a lot of TV in my wayward childhood. One show that I liked was Scooby Doo. Until Scrappy Doo came into the picture. Anyway Mystery Inc always seemed to find clues that would solve the case, especially if it involved a rubber mask or a projector of ghostly images. Unfortunately, I did not have a talking dog to help me out when I purchased my fixer upper.
The first mystery was the case of the crawlspace castaways. The house had some repairs that needed to be made to satisfy the insurance company. There were two window panes that were broken. There is some spots in the siding on the additions that had rotted out. The trellis in front of the front porch crawl space fell off. The trellis thing was something that I could do myself. So I went over to the house to clean out the crawl space and nail the trellis back up. There was a lot of trash below the porch that I had to clear out. There was the stuff you would expect. Garden hoses. Check. Buckets. Not surprised. I even found an old tub of Dry- Loc. Totally cool. But what was a mystery to me was the car battery and floor mats. Discarded beer bottles? No problem. But why was there an empty sardine can? And what was the deal with all the used paper towels? Another part of this mystery was the fact that somebody planted tomatoes and mint on the front lawn. Seriously? Why people?
I blame Buck Bender for this mess.
The next mystery was the extent of how much lead and asbestos I have in the house. Given the age of the house, I expected lead paint somewhere. When I did the home inspection for information purposes, the inspector found some asbestos on the basement ducting. It wasn’t a lot so I didn’t think much of it. But I had a formal inspection done by a company that specializes in lead and asbestos testing. The only lead paint they found were on two interior doors that were exterior doors before the front and rear additions were built as well as the glaze on a few tiles in the bathroom. The fact that the interior walls didn’t have any lead paint was quite a relief! I felt like Neo dodging bullets.
But then I got the asbestos report. It was worse than expected. Asbestos was found in the tiles below the stairs, the tiles in the rear addition and the bathroom tiles too. This will set me back roughly $2500. But that does explain the hanging bed sheet which was probably hung up to minimize the impact of the sheet of asbestos on the duct.
The next mystery was discovered by the exterminator. During the second round of bed bug treatment the exterminators found old skin that a snake had shed. The exterminator found the skin on the kitchen floor which means that there are probably mice somewhere about. So now I have to find a mongoose to deal with the snake…
The last mystery was the case of the poster that was left behind. Who was that woman hanging out in my basement? Well, that was figured out when I did a walk through of the house with my lead contractor and the designer. Upon closer inspection, there was a signature at the bottom of the poster, that of one Jenny McCarthy. Feel free to Google her image. Doing so with or without the adult content filters are up to your own conscious (and who may not be around)!
So with said mysteries solved, I have to get around to fixing the problem at some point. The lead doors will be done during demo. The asbestos stuff will be done after some stuff have been removed and out of the way. Bait and glue traps have been set for mice and snakes. At the end of these horrors, I suspect I will look something like this.
- But only with a snake in my mouth.
