Or, Why I'm walking around looking like this:



Oh yeah, you know you want me.

The whole disturbing story started Sunday evening right before the fondue party. A piece of shelving collapsed in our bathroom and severed the water pipe between the toilet and the wall. I got it shut off within seconds, and other than greeting our party guests while draining water from the kitchen light fixtures below, all seemed well at the moment. We set up fans to dry the floor (remember, it was literally only seconds the water was running, it shouldn't take too long, right?)

By the next morning, it was obvious it wasn't going to dry without some more help. The carpet was still very wet. So, I started to pull it up to see if I could get the air under there to help it dry. That's when I saw the mold.



It's not really easy to see here, but it's a virtual rainbow of 3-D goodness. And those dark lines around the edges? They're the tackstrips for the carpet, they're supposed to be a light pine color. They were so moldy they were just flaking apart. Tasty. It became obvious that we had gone beyond just drying up the floor, and were well on our way to having a biohazard situation if I didn't act quickly.

I began ripping up the sopping wet carpet and padding, which, as you all know from reading earlier this week, I'd just gone over with a carpet cleaner. Man, it doesn't matter how much mud you suck out of your carpet, it's still nasty underneath. Oh, and apparently in my case, covered with sunflower seed hulls...



My girls are convinced that hamsters installed our bathroom carpet. I don't care who installed it, I think it was a stupid idea and the CDC agrees. Avoiding carpet in bathrooms is on their list of seven recommendations for keeping mold out of buildings. Take THAT, carpet!

Anyway, between the mold, the dust and whatever else was living in and under my bathroom carpet, my nose hasn't stopped running since yesterday, hence the lovely Kleenex plugs. We're getting the bathroom dried up and sanitized, and we're in the process of painting. After all that we'll put some new flooring down, NOT carpet. The shelving unit has been sent to the garage for punishment, and the toilet is having a time out in the tub.