WDM, IA - Seeing Spots

In January of 2009, while we were in Corpus Christi, Cathy and Tom, my sister- and brother-in-law called to tell us that a pipe had bust in our lower level but that they had taken care of it. We returned in May and busily set about re-doing the whole lower level. We replaced the lowered tile ceiling with a regular ceiling, replaced the 4 windows and took out a wall. We did hire a local company to put in the drywall, tape and finish it. We painted all the walls and the ceiling and had the new carpeting installed. Finished with this project and none too soon. 1 week later we headed off for our winter sojourn.

When we returned back to the home in may of 2010, we noticed some small spots on one of the walls. We didn’t pay much attention but this year, we’ve noticed lots of spots. They are light grey, becoming more numerous and seemingly, under the paint. Now, I know what you’re thinking and, in truth, mold was one of our first throughts also. However, all of these spots appear where they smeared joint compound when they put in the dry wall. None of the spots go through the dry wall, since we can see the back side of the dry wall in an unfinished storage room.

Now, I’ve seen mold before and you can always touch it, it seems fuzzy and you can clean it off. This has none of these characteristics. It’s not fuzzy and I can’t touch it. I’ve tried scrubbing with water and soap and have had no success in gettting rid of it. Not only that, but there is no water source for all the areas where these spots appear. Mold needs water to grow. The humidity in our lower level is fine. 

Very puzzling. We called the dry wall company which sent out a representative who agreed with us that it seemed to be on the drywall joints. But, of course, ‘they have never had this problem before' and ‘they are a very reputable company’. We’ll get back to them. We then called in an official certified home inspector who took air samples on all three levels, cut off a section of the paint and joint compound and sent them all to a lab to test. But, he did tell us that it did not seem to be mold.

Sure enough, we have the official lab reports back and it is not mold: we have no instances of any mold in our house. (Of course, I didn’t have him check my cheese drawer in my refrigerator.) Now what? Well, we pulled all our furniture away from the walls to better see and track the problem. Next we circled all the spots on one wall - to see if they multiply or grow. Finally we are going to paint some with Kilz to see it they come through this. We’re going to leave our lower level like this over the winter to ascertain what we can do to get rid of this problem.

Here I am, circling the spots on one of the easiest areas to reach and monitor.

If you have any idea or have seen this before, please tell us. We’d love an answer. Meanwhile, we’re living like this for a while.

Kind of scrunched but we do want to be able to reach our walls. At least everything is handy.

I'm just sure that the dry wall company had a bad can of joint compound - but that is going to be fairly difficult to prove, especially 3 years after they did the work.