Our Asbestos Adventure: What NOT to Do When Remodeling - Part 4

Catch up on Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. 

The tiles were 10% asbestos!

Had we sealed our fate? Were we going to die a horrible death from lung cancer from this huge mistake? And how in the world were we going to get the rest of the tiles out of the basement without further exposure?

 
We were stumped. What WERE we going to do about the halfway-demoed asbestos in our basement?

We did some internet research on the subject.

Asbestos products like ceiling tiles and floor tiles are not dangerous unless a person intends to remove them (like us), and then only if the tiles break apart and the miniscule asbestos products get in the air where they can be inhaled. If we hadn't ripped out the carpet (whose glue caused the tiles to break up and tear apart), we could have lived for years without any danger. In fact, if the carpet hadn't been glued down, we could have easily replaced it and installed new carpet right overtop of the existing tiles and never had a problem.

As it was, that carpet HAD to go (because a huge mold colony is a teensy bit of a problem and major health hazard, too). And of course it ripped up the tiles it was glued to in the process of removal. And of course the tiles that got ripped up did break apart, into millions of tiny pieces. And of course those pieces/particles floated around the air. Of course.

So, in hindsight, we didn't have alot of options except to completely remove the tiles anyways. Which would've been fine - if they didn't contain asbestos.

It is highly recommended that once a homeowner stumbles upon asbestos in a tile that they either leave it alone or get a professional to come and remove it.

Unfortunately for us, most of the damage was already done, and we didn't see the need or have the money to hire spacesuit-clad professionals to come finish our demo job. They use all sorts of high-tech technology (like fans with particle sensors and lasers) to make sure that all the asbestos is entirely removed - it takes them days to remove it, and believe me, it is EXPENSIVE to have the pro's do it. Like up to thousands of dollars a day.

All things considered, we weighed the risks vs. benefits of hiring pro's to finish the last 20% of the job (and de-contaminate the rest of the basement), or just do it ourselves.

Being true DIY-ers at heart, we decided to finish this job up ourselves.

We turned to a DIY-ers best friend, the internet, for some tips on how to handle asbestos containment and removal.

There are several key methods that we used:

1) Health first. Invest in a N95 rated mask. This is the ONLY type of mask that will filter out particles as tiny as asbestos, and double-check that it's says it filters out asbestos on the package. (and it also filters out pretty much everything - I love wearing that thing to paint and clean with bleach - you can't smell a thing!)

2) To keep the asbestos particles from getting in the air, mist the tiles with a water sprayer before demoing. The water will weigh down the tiles/particles and prevent them from becoming airborne. Keep misting throughout the demo work.

3) Once all the asbestos tiles are removed, CLEAN that whole area like you've never cleaned before. We used a diluted bleach solution to help remove both the asbestos and any remaining mold residue/spores. We cleaned the floor (many, many times), walls, and ceiling.

4) Invest in a heavy-duty particle-filtering air filter. I believe we found one that filtered asbestos.

5) Dispose of the asbestos tiles properly.

Using these simple methods we were able to finish the job on our own and get the basement finished!

As for our health?

After reading many articles, we found that the danger of developing lung cancer from short-term asbestos exposure is extremely low - the real danger lies in repeated exposure and inhalation of asbestos particles in a day-to-day basis over the course of years. For instance, a construction worker who repeatedly demolishes asbestos products everyday for years would have a much higher risk of developing lung cancer later in life.

So for us, we're probably going to be a-okay. Whew!

Did I mention that this was our first big project that we tackled in the entire house once we became homeowners? Talk about getting the worst of it overwith first! Everything we've done since then has been extremely easy - I guess once you've been terrified for your life from a home improvement project nothing is too difficult or scary anymore!

Was our basement remodel worth all the trouble (and unknowing life-risk, haha!)?

Before

After

We sure think so.

Plus, we can actually stay down there now for 20 minutes without getting a headache. Yeah, that's right - screw you, mold!

Moral of the story: Know what asbestos tiles look like (usually 9x9" vinyl tiles, but can be other sizes), and investigate BEFORE you take a hammer to 'em. Because if they do contain asbestos, it will probably be much, much easier - and cheaper - to just leave those babies alone!

How about you? Have you ever had a run-in with asbestos? Did our story scare you silly? Are you surprised that we're still DIYing things after that crazy fiasco? We sure are!

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Our Asbestos Adventure: What NOT to Do When Remodeling - Part 3

Catch up on Part 1 and Part 2 here. 

Eventually, we got about 80% of the tiles tore out of the basement, and things were looking good. We didn't have much left to do, and were excited since we'd been at it for weeks now.

We could see the light at the end of the tunnel... until everything came to a complete and utter stop, and we were absolutely terrified.


What happened to instill sheer terror into our hearts, you ask?

Well, I guess you would call it some sort of intuition on my part. One morning I woke up and something was nagging and pulling at my mind, but I ignored it and got ready for my day. All day at work, I knew something was wrong, but I just couldn't put my finger on it. As the day went on I grew more and more weary, and in my heart I just knew that something bad was lurking and waiting.

It wasn't until the next morning when I woke up with only one thought in my mind that I figured out what my subconscious had been trying to tell me:

"Asbestos".

Now, maybe if you were old enough to be aware during the big asbestos scare back in the 80's this random thought of mine wouldn't really seem to be so random. But people - I was born in 1985, and only heard whisperings of asbestos once or twice in my childhood, and those whisperings usually only concerned ceilings, never floors. And I haven't even heard that term uttered in many, many years.

Now it seems a little more weird, huh?

So, apparently my 6th sense was more in-tune with the dangers of asbestos than my conscious mind ever was, until I woke up that one morning and just knew in my heart that those tiles we'd been carelessly ripping out and tearing apart in our basement was asbestos.

But I was praying I was wrong.

So, what is asbestos and how bad, really, could it be? Turns out, pretty dang bad indeed.

From Wikipedia:

Asbestos is a set of six naturally occurring silicate minerals exploited commercially for their desirable physical properties. They all have in common their asbestiform habit, long, thin fibrous crystals. The inhalation of asbestos fibers can cause serious illnesses, including malignant lung cancer, mesothelioma (a formerly rare cancer strongly associated with exposure to amphibole asbestos), and asbestosis (a type of pneumoconiosis). Long exposure to high concentrations of asbestos fibers is more likely to cause health problems, as asbestos exists in the ambient air at low levels, which itself does not cause health problems.

Not good for us.

And the only way to be sure your tiles are or aren't contaminated with asbestos is to have them tested at a lab.

So we did.

And they found ours to be about 10% asbestos.

Yikes.

 As soon as we heard the results, we couldn't help but think about all the asbestos particles that we were, unknowingly, inhaling through the particles in the air as we broke apart the tiles, day after day after day. You can literally see the tile dust in the air in this photo.

Tile dust that was 10% asbestos!

Had we sealed our fate? Were we going to die a horrible death from lung cancer from this huge mistake? And how in the world were we going to get the rest of the tiles out of the basement without further exposure?

Read on and go to Part 4!

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Our Asbestos Adventure: What NOT to Do When Remodeling - Part 2

Catch up on Part 1 here.

Anyways, we grabbed our carpet cutting blades and set out to get down to work. We sliced up the carpet in spots, and then grabbed a corner and started pulling... and was astounded at what we found.
We started pulling back the carpet, only to realize that the carpet was - are you ready for this? - GLUED down onto tiles! We were just... speechless. I mean, really - who GLUES down their carpet?! No wonder nobody replaced the carpet or even had it professionally cleaned after the basement flooded - because they didn't want to deal with carpet that was stinkin' GLUED down!

In this picture Tom is pulling back the carpet to reveal beige tiles underneath.

Our first solution (after recovering from the shock of it all), was to just try to pry off the carpet while keeping the tiles intact, and then we could just install the new carpet (and carpet pad - the previous carpet had no carpet pad underneath, which was very, um, hard and not comfortable) overtop of the existing tiles.

But of course that plan wouldn't work out for us - that would be too easy!

As we continued pulling and tugging (and cursing the previous homeowners, but we're not naming any names here) to get the carpet off the tiles, we realized that some of the time the tiles would break up and come up with the carpet.

Apparently they used some sort of superman-strength super-glue to glue that lovely carpet down to the tiles! Or at least that's what it seemed like to us.

So our plan went completely out the window. So much for saving tons of backbreaking labor - thanks to some of the tiles coming up, we now had to completely remove ALL the tiles (which covered the whole basement - around 800 sq. feet of it). If we didn't remove all the tiles for an even surface before installing the new carpet, as you walked across the carpet you would be able to feel the height difference when you stepped in a spot that had a missing tile. Lovely, right? Yeahhh.

So we invested in a long-handled tool that would help get those pesky floor tiles out. However, it was still long, hard, backbreaking work.

First off, these tiles were old-fashioned vinyl adhesive tiles, and back in the days of the 1970's they used a type of super-sticky yellowish mastic to adhere them to the floor. Which held up great - to our dismay. Yep, those tiles were nearly impossible to get out - and over the 40ish years that they've been installed, the yellow mastic slowly turned into a springy, black rubbery-type floor covering.

I kid you not. It was like we had black rubber completely covering the basement under those tiles. It even smelled like rubber when we would accidentally gouge it with our tile-demo tool.

In this photo you can see all 3 layers of flooring - the blue carpet, the beige tiles, and the black mastic. You can also see how the tiles are breaking up into tiny pieces and tile dust is floating in the air. Our floor-tile-demo tool is leaning against the wall on the left.

So all that rubberish-mastic made using our tile-floor-demo tool very difficult, because it's mostly made for smooth, hard underlying floor, so the metal strip can slide underneath any tiles and with a little pressure can just pop those babies out. But for us, all it really did (when it wasn't getting caught on the rubbery mastic), was break off little tiny pieces of tile, a little at a time. Tons of tile dust was also flying through the air, as well, which was lots of fun, especially considering it smelled like we were working in a tire factory the whole time. Which, I suppose, was probably a slight improvement over the mold-induced headaches we used to get down there.

Did I mention it was horrifying and backbreaking work? Oh, that's right, I already mentioned that.

So for weeks, we would pull up the carpet and then go to town with the tile-demo tool, everynight after work, usually for hours at a time until around midnight. We'd go to bed sore and aching, and repeat it all the next day. Let's just say it was.not.fun. And since we didn't have a dumpster, everynight we'd sweep all the little tile bits and put them into trash bags and throw them in the backyard until trash day when we could throw a few bags away.

Since we were new to the neighborhood, we liked to imagine (during all those long and difficult hours down there tearing out tiles) what all the neighbors were saying about us - we were sure it wasn't anything good, but probably pretty funny stuff.

Eventually, we got about 80% of the tiles tore out of the basement, and things were looking good. We didn't have much left to do, and were excited since we'd been at it for weeks now.

We could see the light at the end of the tunnel... until everything came to a complete and utter stop, and we were absolutely terrified.

Read part 3 here!

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Our Asbestos Adventure: What NOT to Do When Remodeling - Part 1

As you may or may not know, we had a little incident with asbestos during our basement remodel.

And it wasn't pretty.

It made such an impact on us that it's taken me nearly 2 years to get up the guts to actually share this on the blog. So, I've relived all the horrible memories, because I want to share our story with you, so you can:

1) be entertained at everything us new-and-completely novice homeowners did wrong in our first remodeling project,
2) continue to be astounded at the horrible abuse previous homeowners subjected our house to, and
3) hopefully pick up some tips on proper mold and asbestos handling, but mostly know what NOT to do if you ever run into it.

Laugh. Cry. Empathize. Pity. Rejoice. Learn. Whatever your reaction to our most harrowing story and experience, I hope you enjoy reading about and experiencing our adventure.

So, without further adieu, I present to you: our asbestos adventure.

The story goes as thus...

Shortly after purchasing our new home and moving in, we noticed, as the weather outside got warmer and more humid, that the basement smelled. BAD. It was like it was giving off noxious gas fumes, and - I kid you not - we would get headaches after being down there for 15 minutes.

Obviously not good.

After a few days, we couldn't take it anymore (and neither could our health). We figured out that the carpet in the basement was probably full of disgusting mold (ew), thanks to (our best guess) the water heater breaking and the basement flooding (we found some water damage to prove it). Hence the new water heater we had inherited.

Well, once a carpeted area of a home floods with water, what SHOULD be done is either 1) hire a professional immediately to professionally clean and air-out the carpet, or 2) replace the carpet as soon as possible. Guess what happens if you don't? Mold spores start to grow in the carpet.

So can you guess what the owner did when the basement flooded?

Yep, that's right, nada. They did nothing. Thanks alot, previous homeowner.

So, after we deduced all of this, that carpet had TO GO. Like, immediately.

We armed ourselves with some carpet cutting blades, and set out to get down n' dirty with the moldy carpet - without, might I add, eye goggles OR respiratory masks. BIG mistake!

Some molds are seriously dangerous - and although the majority of them aren't really harmful, no molds are really good for a person to inhale or come into contact with. When dealing with mold, always take the proper precautions. This we know now.

Anyways, we grabbed our carpet cutting blades and set out to get down to work. We sliced up the carpet in spots, and then grabbed a corner and started pulling... and was astounded at what we found.

Read Part 2!

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