If you’ve ever dealt with anything mold related it’s ugly. I hate mold and we kept smelling something musty…definitely wet. 

Rewind. 

We had bought our house 8 years ago and did a remodel of the entire 1st floor and some changes upstairs. At the time I (Beau) was working in a sales job and Julianne was into her Private Practice work as a Therapist. We had two kids and our third on the way – life was looking good as we tore into the new house walls and floors and tile. 

We hired some great people who really discussed the process of remodeling and actually taught us some of what we would later repeat into our business (and still use to this day). It’s fun looking back into what we were trying to do without knowing….anything. The plans came together and the changes we made did make sense and we saw them unfold from top-to-bottom in every single phase of our new home; exactly the way we talked about late at night, after the kids were finally down, eating ice cream and dreaming about what our new home would be one day.

The master shower was an exciting part of the plan–we made a large walk-in shower and felt like it was bigger and better than we had dreamed! The guy we hired was a solid dude. He knew how to do tile work, plumbing work, electric work, even did painting but we said not to worry about the paint. 

At one point, our guy was about to start the tile work on the shower walls and I mentioned to him about ‘red guard’ which was something I’d seen on an episode of an HGTV show.Can’t remember which show it was but ‘Red Guard’ is the stuff you put on the new walls of the shower–BEFORE TILE IS INSTALLED, that seals everything up to keep water from getting into the cracks, seeping into and behind the tile and grout causing problems…like mold. 

The convo went something like this: 

“Hey, quick question….are you gonna red-guard this before you put the tile up?”

“Hmm..Red Guard? What’s that?” he said. 

“Well, I’m pretty sure it’s that stuff that covers the walls to keep moisture out…like waterproof…ya know? It covers all the corners and nail holes…like a sealer?” I said to him. 

“I’ve been doing showers and tile for over 20 years and I’ve never used that”

“Oh. Uhh…hmm, Ok. Well, I….ok.”  I mumbled to myself.

So that was the end of that. 

Our guy, our: one-man-band, price-is-right-cuz he does it all GUY was ready to tile the walls, grout 'em, and get the shower wrapped up. He was pretty much on schedule and things were looking great.

Fast Forward 8 years. 

“It’s mold! It stinks and everytime I come in here I think it smells ‘musty’. I try to tell myself it’s just damp from using the shower or the weather outside is causing some sort of effect inside….”

“I’m telling you that the shower has some sort of moisture leaking somewhere–I SMELL IT - I KNOW IT’S IN HERE!” Julianne said this to me multiple times. 

And She was right. 

We tore it all out. We went down to the studs. And when we removed the tile…guess what? 

When we got to the demo of the shower curb…you know….the space that separates the outside from the inside of your shower. The CURB is what you step-over and into the shower. Some have tile, some have a solid stone ‘lip’.   

Well apparently our ‘guy’ built the shower curb with a 2x4 and wrapped it with concrete board and then tile. The problem is that he never removed the 2x4 and also did not pour concrete to make the curb. SO this is what we pulled out once we removed the Tile and concrete board:

That black 2x4 circled in red - that’s not a piece of burnt wood.That’s the 2x4 from the shower CURB!!!

WET WOOD – FROM 8 YEARS OF SHOWERS. 8 YEARS OF CONSTANT MOISTURE INTRUSION.  8 YEARS OF CONSTANT MUSTY, MOLDY, MILDEW SMELLS! Who knows if it was making us sick!! Maybe it was?! Either way…it was wrong and it was done wrong from the beginning.  

And you know what really gets me…..?

I knew it when it was happening. 

There are things that happen in projects, even remodels, that you may see or have noticed, that are questionable.

But what do we do? I KNEW that my shower should have been waterproofed with RED-GUARD before the tile went up and when I was met with opposition, I folded. Would it have solved all the problems we had with water/mold? Probably so, if done properly. 

When we don’t know, confidently, that we need something done in construction, we give-in to the ‘professional’ and defer to their judgment or expertise. 

So here’s to everyone who needs a hand and need’s a sounding board. We get it and we know what it feels like. Everyone learns and unfortunately for us, we had to learn the hard way.

 It WAS mold. It WAS damp. It WAS smelly. 

And I knew we should have done something BEFORE the tile went up. 

We’re rooting for you!

Beau and Julianne