We Played "Find the Smell"

The primary bathroom has/had a bizarre oversized, single-occupant shower that was clearly a MacGyvered-together personal project from the former owner. One of the tells that this was a stroke of genius from the Ghost of Home Owners Past is that water had clearly worked its way into the wall shared with the primary bedroom and there was water damage and mold along the baseboard. Further driving concern was that after about a week in the house Brie and I noticed a pronounced sickly sweet smell while in their (we had already decided to not use the obviously borked shower, but...everybody poops). 

Bull by the horns we bought a pry bar and used the long weekend to our benefit. We found:

  1. A plastic shell glued to the pre-existing tiling. The shell overlapped awkwardly and odd gapping had been stuffed with wooden shims and aluminum foil and then caulked over to death.
  2. Some kind of open hole in the wall that I guess might have been a previous shower head, but that doesn't track. Whatever it was we can all agree that you shouldn't leave a hole in the wall in a wet area.
  3. Once we got the shell pulled away it was pretty easy to see what had happened. he had removed the tiles down below and then filled back in with hard wood and dry wall. You can't use dry wall in a wet zone. Also the copper pipes are 60+ years old and leaking (check out that patina!) The drywall on the adjoining wall, though still inappropriate, appears undamaged.
  4. And here's where we are currently. The plan is to cut away the baseboard and drywall on the other side of this open wall to finish removing the water damage and then pull up the floor pan to see if there's any damage underneath.

To us this was a best case scenario. We knew there was mold, we knew there was water damage. Having it all so neatly contained to this one wall, with the studs mostly unaffected, and the wiring in the wall safe despite the wetness, is a big relief. Brie treated the studs with some bleach spray to address the surface mold and the smell is mostly gone from the room. We're going to leave this open for now as we don't need a second shower and other than pulling up the pan this weekend, leave it pretty much alone since our eventual plans call for gutting both bathrooms and redoing them at the same time.

-Stephen







 

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