Some of you are aware that Steve and I have had our own little lead paint drama. We tested our kitchen cupboards in early July and were horrified to discover that they had problematic levels of lead on the surfaces. We know our apartment building is old, but we assumed that the old lead paint was safely buried beneath layers of new paint. For most of the surfaces, that's true. But the doors and cupboards stick and hence there's a good bit of friction, so those particular areas are really not safe. It's fine for now, but when we have a baby crawling around and sticking everything in his/her mouth, it would be dangerous.
We hired an environmental consultant, who made some recommendations. We had a little bit of a letter-writing war with our landlord, who finally sent in his own environmental consultant, who made the same recommendations. More letters followed. (Having a lawyer in the household is a nice little advantage, I find.) And now, two months later, the contractors have finally arrived to fix the problems. The bathroom is being totally repainted and "sealed". All of the internal doors (closets, bed, and bath) are being removed and the door jambs stripped and repainted. And the kitchen cabinet doors are being removed entirely, and the shelves repainted. Work started in the apartment today and will probably continue for 3-4 days. Although it is rather disruptive, we're happy that the work is being done - it will allow us to stay in the apartment for longer without the nagging worry that the paint is poisoning us or baby.
We bought the lead paint testing kit at our local hardware store for $7-8. If you're living in an old place (with a baby) and are seeing substantial friction or peeling paint, you might want to check it out.
2 comments:
Brianna,
I'm glad to here that you and Steve were able to get things sorted out.
Anna and I got frustrated with our previous landlord. He offered to pay for the supplies required to resolve the problem if we wanted to do the work, or he told us that he would happily to the work himself, but his work schedule wouldn't allow him to get to it for a few months. Nearly 6 months later, after Silas was born, we decided that we'd had enough and resolved the problem by moving to an apartment that we knew was safe.
Our current apartment is in a much newer house that is owned by a really great young family that had the place tested inside and out. They lived here for a while and wanted to make sure their family was safe.
- Jeff
Oh, Jeff, I'm so jealous of your new situation. Our paint is still peeling in some places, and our landlord has become very grouchy with us. He seems to be holding a grudge.
And to top it off, the contractors left the biggest mess in our apartment. We've spent two entire weekends cleaning up - vacuuming (with a HEPA vacuum) and washing pretty much everything we own, to make sure that no lead dust remains. It's been pretty awful.
So our solution will eventually have to be the same - moving somewhere much newer than this place.
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