Checking for Mold During a Remodel

OAKLAND — If you’re remodeling your home, one of the most important things you can do is check to see what’s behind your walls. Why? Because if there’s any hidden mold or mildew, it could jeopardize your entire project.

In most cases, it’s impossible to know whether mold or mildew is present behind the walls in a home, but it’s better to find out for sure than to make a wrong assumption. This is especially important if you live in an older home, where the combination of time and inferior building methods and materials increases the opportunity for mold or mildew issues to take root.

Consider a real-life example from a home addition project I recently did in Berkeley. Initially, when we opened up the walls, everything looked good on the inside, but as we got further into the project, we discovered there was a lot of mold and mildew. It’s a good thing we found it—otherwise, we might have completed the project without fixing the problem, which, as with all moisture-related problems, would only get worse over time and potentially ruin the work we did.