Ceiling collapse update
Aug. 4th, 2008 05:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
muck_a_luckFriday Pedro from The House Doctors arrived. V, our Mr. Landlord, spent the day here, too.
Pedro got a late start because three lanes were blocked on 495. The same thing happened going the other direction in the evening rush hour. People in Woodbridge, or Lorton, or whereever the heck people live at that end of the Beltway were pretty pissed on Friday.
Pedro says that not only was the ceiling only nailed up, but there is also a glue that is used to attach ceilings, and that was also not done properly.
He is planning to put screws into The Barbarian's room and the stairwell hall and the kids' bathroom.
The master bedroom appears to have no nails left. It appears to be being held up by the corners and the drywall of the walls. They will be taking the ceiling down in there and putting up a new one.
A week. *sigh*
I feel like the family has gone to the mattresses. *snerks*
I made sad, googly Mommy eyes at Pedro about the legos that were going to be mixed into the dirt on AG33's floor, sighing tragically about how there clearly was no practical way to save them, just suck them up.
Mr. Landlord said Pedro was vacuuming through his fingers to find the lost toys in the dust.
The dust was almost entirely filler insulation and not made of fiberglass.
So Friday, Pedro vacuumed, Mr. Landlord brought down pre-cleaned items - they were trying to dump all the dust upstairs, sometimes vacuuming things some as they went. I took the stuff they brought down and cleaned it. I got all the books boxed up, washed some toys, dusted others. Vacuumed stuffed animals and bedding so they can go through the washer.
The dustmite cover on AG33's bed seems to have protected the mattress COMPLETELY. They peeled it off, the mattress was fine. The arm chair was out of the way of the worst of it, and they vacuumed it off, too.
When they finished on Friday, after between 5 and 6 hours up there, the room looked good as new. Except the ceiling, of course.
However, I wasn't able to deal with all the stuff they brought outside. So we got the books in, and I brought all the already cleaned items under the shelter of our front door entryway, and I looked at the rest of it and thought, well, if it gets rained on, it gets rained on.
And, of course, it rained, both heavily in the night, and again in the morning.
So AG33 lost a second round of stuff, to the rain. Mostly a few art itmes that I thought were worth saving but failed to move under cover, and a number of lego instruction books. Nothing major, so my judgment about what could afford to be in the rain was pretty good, I guess.
All I can say is, if it had really been fiberglass, the whole lot of it would have been junk.
Plus, there was a quantity of stuff that either didn't get hit by the ceiling collapse or which was packaged in such a way that it could just be dusted off. All of the LOTR action figures were in their crates, as were about half of the legos.
Now, everything is in The Barbarian's room to clear the way for new ceilings to get hanged in our room and AG33's room. Meanwhile, I have become completely paranoid. While we were working yesterday to get the stuff out of the master bedroom, I swear I heard the ceiling in the hallway outside our room creak and now I think there are new cracks around the air vent there.
Please, God, do not let the upstairs HVAC unit fall through into the bathroom. Amen.
Pedro got a late start because three lanes were blocked on 495. The same thing happened going the other direction in the evening rush hour. People in Woodbridge, or Lorton, or whereever the heck people live at that end of the Beltway were pretty pissed on Friday.
Pedro says that not only was the ceiling only nailed up, but there is also a glue that is used to attach ceilings, and that was also not done properly.
He is planning to put screws into The Barbarian's room and the stairwell hall and the kids' bathroom.
The master bedroom appears to have no nails left. It appears to be being held up by the corners and the drywall of the walls. They will be taking the ceiling down in there and putting up a new one.
A week. *sigh*
I feel like the family has gone to the mattresses. *snerks*
I made sad, googly Mommy eyes at Pedro about the legos that were going to be mixed into the dirt on AG33's floor, sighing tragically about how there clearly was no practical way to save them, just suck them up.
Mr. Landlord said Pedro was vacuuming through his fingers to find the lost toys in the dust.
The dust was almost entirely filler insulation and not made of fiberglass.
So Friday, Pedro vacuumed, Mr. Landlord brought down pre-cleaned items - they were trying to dump all the dust upstairs, sometimes vacuuming things some as they went. I took the stuff they brought down and cleaned it. I got all the books boxed up, washed some toys, dusted others. Vacuumed stuffed animals and bedding so they can go through the washer.
The dustmite cover on AG33's bed seems to have protected the mattress COMPLETELY. They peeled it off, the mattress was fine. The arm chair was out of the way of the worst of it, and they vacuumed it off, too.
When they finished on Friday, after between 5 and 6 hours up there, the room looked good as new. Except the ceiling, of course.
However, I wasn't able to deal with all the stuff they brought outside. So we got the books in, and I brought all the already cleaned items under the shelter of our front door entryway, and I looked at the rest of it and thought, well, if it gets rained on, it gets rained on.
And, of course, it rained, both heavily in the night, and again in the morning.
So AG33 lost a second round of stuff, to the rain. Mostly a few art itmes that I thought were worth saving but failed to move under cover, and a number of lego instruction books. Nothing major, so my judgment about what could afford to be in the rain was pretty good, I guess.
All I can say is, if it had really been fiberglass, the whole lot of it would have been junk.
Plus, there was a quantity of stuff that either didn't get hit by the ceiling collapse or which was packaged in such a way that it could just be dusted off. All of the LOTR action figures were in their crates, as were about half of the legos.
Now, everything is in The Barbarian's room to clear the way for new ceilings to get hanged in our room and AG33's room. Meanwhile, I have become completely paranoid. While we were working yesterday to get the stuff out of the master bedroom, I swear I heard the ceiling in the hallway outside our room creak and now I think there are new cracks around the air vent there.
Please, God, do not let the upstairs HVAC unit fall through into the bathroom. Amen.
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no subject
Date: 2008-08-04 11:18 am (UTC)I've decided, btw, that I can't read about your ceiling woes in my house, because it seems to have given my house ideas. Nothing's fallen down yet, but it seems like the plumbing in one of the upstairs bathrooms is causing trouble (and is leaking to stain the ceiling below it, which is right above the rabbit).
no subject
Date: 2008-08-04 01:11 pm (UTC)did Pedro take a look to be sure none of that insulation had been wet (and then dried out) before collapse? That is something that would have made it heavier and stressed the ceiling.
Also, I'm sure you've told your neighbors on either side because if the builders short cut on your unit's ceiling, chances are they short cut on all of them.
You did not mention if Pedro checked the downstairs ceilings for improper installation...
/motherhen
*tosses some good karma your general direction*
no subject
Date: 2008-08-04 01:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-04 01:50 pm (UTC)*HUGGLES*
no subject
Date: 2008-08-04 01:54 pm (UTC)*smoosh* I hope AG33 is surviving the loss of some of his stuff okay.
no subject
Date: 2008-08-04 03:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-04 07:52 pm (UTC)