A lot of hot air

A few weeks ago we had to move all our furniture out of the hallways and the bathroom cupboard. The house looked like this for a day or two...

We just slid the wardrobe out of the way as we can't really put it anywhere else, we put a blanket under it to avoid damaging the floor.

We covered the turtle tank for dust, and just threw all the stuff out of the bathroom cupboard in the bath.

Where was all the other furniture? Piled up in the bedroom...

 And it was all for this...can you see it?

It's the vent on the top left, we finally got our mould solution fitted!

Back in this post I mentioned the mould problems we have had, and the landlord had promised he would sort something as opening windows didn't seem to be doing anything.

So 2 weeks ago we had this PIV unit fitted. The part in the hallway is a lot more noticeable!

We have a decorator coming to possibly box it in, and tidy up all the plaster and paint. The switch was originally lower down but the landlord wanted it moved higher. Gives us more freedom with furniture and does look neater. Well it will do once it's all tidied up.

I've cleaned all the walls again and the furniture that was affected. See those light grey/green streaks on the table? They're not wood grain, they're mould. Lush. Everything has been bleached within an inch of its life to kill off the mould (other than the bedroom ceiling as I can't reach it) and fingers crossed it won't be back.

The unit brings fresh air into the rooms which don't have windows to try to get some air movement in the flat and avoid the condensation issues we have been having. I'm not really 100% sure how it works but also it exchanges the air, through the existing extractor fan flue in the hallway. There is a switch we can put on for it to heat the incoming air too so it won't be too draughty in winter. It apparently will work for a 3 bedroom house so we're hoping it will solve our problem. I have noticed that the air in the rooms with no windows feels less stale, but only time will tell over the winter if it helps with the mould.

The decorator will also repaint the rooms affected by the mould. This is the whole bedroom, one wall in the living room and the bathroom. Apparently the bathroom was just painted in matt paint, so this time it's going to be done in bathroom paint, as it is peeling but with being a basement bathroom with no windows that's to be expected.

All in all I'm just happy something has been done, it's good to have a landlord who actually acts on issues!

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Decorating with guitars...

Tom has 3 guitars, 2 are on stands and one is tucked away down the side of the book case in the living room. The 2 on stands used to be in the living room, but we moved them out to make way for the Christmas tree, they ended up in the bedroom and never came back.

I liked having that bit extra space in the living room, and I finally found a place for the canvases here, where the guitars used to be.

Photo from an upcoming post on flowers!

However due to the mould in the bedroom, the guitars were starting to get mouldy. Considering the Fender is the most valuable thing we own this is not good. I also liked the pop of yellow it brought into the living room, and I want to try to bring more colour in. So the Fender is now back in the corner in front of the CD player, the corner does look a little cluttered so I might move some things out but for now it lives here.

I really need to get a cable tidy in here asap! I like using the guitars as a decor accessory, as otherwise they would just be in cases behind the wardrobe or somewhere and never be seen. Since we have currently some nice yellow daffodils, a plant in a yellow planet and some green and yellow ikat cushions we are starting to get some more yellow in here now.

The other guitar lives in the dining area now, I saw this little spot was empty after we moved the litter tray. Cable tidy needed in here too I really must get on that it's a job I've been meaning to do since we moved in.

Tom will give them a clean as I have no idea what to use on them and they are pretty mouldy :(

We had people round to assess where to put the PIV unit last week which the landlord has sorted out to stop the mould, so hopefully that will be installed soon then I will have a mould purge and just bleach the entire flat! Then we will (fingers crossed) not have to worry about it again.

I hope you all had a great weekend, we went to the final caterer tasting so hopefully will pick one soon and I'll write a post about it on the wedding blog.

If we owned our flat

I kind of forgot about these! Last one was in November.

Anyway, I still have things I'd do if this flat was ours. Number one at the moment would be ventilation. We are getting mould again, I wrote this post in March last year when we had a small amount and this year it has come back with a vengeance despite us running the dehumidifier and opening the window whenever we can. Condensation damp mostly, as there isn't any ventilation other than the extractor in the bathroom.

This was what it was like a month or so ago (sometime in January), I cleaned it all off the walls and off our furniture and ottoman from Toms wardrobe.

That is meant to be dark brown. Nice.

It is coming up again already though, and the bedroom gets very damp. We had our inspection last weekend and Landlord has some people coming out to look into ventilation this week. Actually he was very good about it, no blaming us for it or trying to get out of it (I was ready to make my case but he just said he'd sort it) which can be the case with damp and landlords...not all of course but I've had issues in the past and have heard similar form other tenants. Things like them saying it's not a problem and we should just live with it or clean the walls more often, or it's our fault for not opening windows (Although we do I'm obsessed with fresh air) or there's nothing they can do. Most of them are bull really, unless you never open the windows and dry washing inside all the time it is unlikely to be your fault and the ventilation needs to be looked at or some damp proofing needs to be done.

In my opinion we need a new window, as the current set up of old window then secondary glazing isn't keeping out the cold and it's always covered in condensation. A modern double gazed window with ventilation would be better. Also an extractor in the kitchen would help to keep the moisture at bay as when we are cooking it gets very moist in here, even with windows open. Apparently the people coming are looking at some ventilation system that goes in the wall, it lets air out and heats it on the way back in so it will help keep the bedroom warmer too. Whatever it is as long as it gets rid of this I'm happy!

This was really hard to get in a photo but you might be able to see in one of these, most of the bad stuff was on the wall with the window but it went onto the other walls in a fine mist.

Apologies for the rubbish photos I was too busy moving furniture out, scrubbing with bleach and trying not to breath in too many mould spores to really sort out lighting and photo quality. Hopefully this will be sorted before next winter (It's better in the summer as we leave the windows open constantly and we dry all our washing outside and there is less damp in the air generally) and I'll just have to clean it one more time...