It’s that time again! March is here and many of us feel the urge to get our home organized. You guessed it. It’s time for Spring Cleaning!
But wait a minute… Why am I writing about spring cleaning in this issue? Perhaps you were expecting to hear more about my own home remodeling adventure as I had promised in the last issue. Actually, it all kind of ties in.
Battling Dust: Our Unavoidable Construction Nemesis
Around this time last year, we suffered a water damage due to a roof leak while we were away at a soccer tournament with our youngest son. We returned home to discover a section of our hardwood floors under a pool of water. This water damage is what prompted our major remodeling undertaking. I promptly called one of my emergency water damage mitigation teams to assist. They arrived at our home on a Sunday night and started removing wet baseboards and our saturated glued-down engineered hardwood floors, as well as sections of several water-damaged walls.
But water was not the worst of our problems. We quickly realized that our worst enemy would become the construction dust. Our “war on dust” began as soon as the Sparkle team started removing affected materials. Initially, my wife frantically tried to clean all horizontal surfaces every evening at the end of the work shift. She quickly found out that this was a task that needed to be done every evening. Dust managed to invade our living space despite my team having relocated everything in the affected rooms. We even had zippered containments with double tape sealing all edges of the containment walls to guard us of the demolition and construction dust. What I learned or more accurately, remembered again, is that there is no way to completely guard off the micro dust parts generated by construction activities. It just goes everywhere. It even permeates sealed contained areas!
As you can imagine, my wife, one of my toughest clients in recent memory, made sure to remind me every evening when I returned home how annoying the ever-returning construction dust was. I had to tell her the same thing I tell all my remediation and remodeling clients: There is no possible way to eliminate every particle of dust when your home or business is under construction. This reality is a real heart-breaker for some folks.
The only way to avoid being impacted by construction dust is moving out of your home and letting your construction company do what needs to get done to be followed by a thorough cleaning of your home after all the construction is finished. But depending on the type of project you are undertaking, moving out can be expensive and even taxing to your family’s dynamics and routines. And even if you can afford it, who really enjoys living in a hotel for several weeks or perhaps several months?
In our home, the consensus was to stay while the remodeling was underway. So we kept guarding off living spaces from construction work spaces. We were diligent in covering up everything and my team erected beautiful 6-mil plastic sheeting containments. We even had at least four or five HEPA air cleaners constantly running. And while the air cleaners helped a great deal, let me break it to you again: There “Ain’t no way around it…”. Don’t get your hopes up… Dust will become your constant roommate during major remodel work. May as well accept it.
Changing your attitude towards what can not be changed will help you endure other challenging aspects of your remodeling project. And with the right attitude, you might even learn how to enjoy getting involved in the beautification of your living or working space. Furthermore, a remediation or remodeling project, might help you move your spiritual goals further. Some of my clients have embraced or rediscovered the joy of yoga and of meditation… I know my wife did! And with my wife at peace, our youngest son and I found our own sense of serenity in the midst of construction chaos.
See you next month for another story of my own home’s remodeling adventure.
If you would like to contact us directly and ask us a question, you can do so online or call Sparkle 24-Hours a Day at 714-641-6600 & 949-631-1001 .