Mold
It has been an interesting couple of days. On New Years Day, when we found our Suburban, Emily noticed that we had a bigger problem than we had anticipated in the upstairs kid’s bathroom. We have noticed some spots around the toilet and really thought nothing of it until New Years when we pulled off the toilet and took a look at the board underneath. The sub-floor was just rotting away. So we filed a home owner’s insurance claim and a restoration company came out and started working. What we thought would be a small job turned into a huge one when they pulled up the linoleum, and as Emily puts it, saw every color of the rainbow. We had a huge mold problem. So, they ripped out the tub and all the sub-floor and have sealed off the bathroom. They put a "air-scrubbing" machine in there to dry it out and then will seal over it and put down a new sub-floor. So, just a reminder that if you see somethign out of the ordinary and your wife says you should take care of it, do it! Don’t wait until you have your own colony of mold growing in your bathroom. No wonder we’ve been sick so much lately!!!
Yes, the black stuff around where the toilet should be is the residue of the mold. The whole sub-floor (3/4 inch pressboard) was almost squishy with the mold. Luckliy, the plywood you see on the floor is better wood than the pressboard so the mold didn’t get into it much.
