The Home Saga

Dear readers, this is a bit of a long post.

After our initial house-hunting trip we zeroed in on our favorite place: a two-bedroom, two-bath home that's about 1,200-square-feet. It came with a washer and dryer, dishwasher and a garbage disposal -- something we haven't had in years in NYC.

Nia loves her new view.

After a slew of back and forth with the fickle landlord -- at the last minute he raised the rent by about $80 a month because, well, I guess he can do that -- we got the place. We were super happy and our move in, while hectic, seemed okay. After more than two months of living in temporary housing we were thrilled to have a place to call home.

And then we showered.

When I got out of the shower, which is all glass, I noticed a huge pool of water had drenched the bathmat and was covering several corners of the room. The smell of mold and mildew was apparent and I knew this couldn't be good. I figured out the problem -- the bottom of the shower door wasn't sealed property, nor were the sides -- and followed the trail of water to find a large hole at the bottom of the bathroom door, completely filled with, to the best of my knowledge, mold.

Giant hole, giant problems.

Naturally, I freak out. Our relocation specialist helped us get repairmen to the building the next day. Now, in the U.S. there are building codes and health codes and something like this would require a mini renovation; I could tell from the hole that the water had leaked into the walls (a bit of the wall was also weathered) and I suspect there's mold in the walls. We'd have to rip out part of the wall, kill the mold, dry it all out and then redo the wall. The landlord wouldn't fight this, knowing that we could get a city inspector to come out and, if things got ugly, take him to court.

The master bathroom.

But in China, we don't have that at all. No health codes, no building codes. Instead, we were told two things: one, that other apartments in this building, which was only built in 2005, have had similar leakage problems, which is proof of mickey-mouse building standards and two, that the way to fix this problem is simply to shove cement into the hole and then re-caulk around the shower. Here's the "fix":

Cement makes everything better, right?

Now, you may ask, why the heck did we rent a place that has mold and how did we not see the hole when looking at the unit? The reason is because we didn't see or smell it. The apartment didn't have electricity when we toured (because no landlord wants to pay for that when there's no one in the space) and the hole was behind the door. We didn't smell it because no one had showered or used any sort of water in the bathroom for awhile.

With the luxury of having two bathrooms, we thought we'd just shower in the other bathroom. But that one leaked too. Again, they re-caulked, put a new flap on the bottom of the shower door and said it's fixed.

But it's not fixed. I still smell mildew.

Our next line of attack is to buy some dehumidifiers to help with the smell. I'm paranoid about our health, though. What's the effect of living in a place that has mold in the walls? How will I know if it's hurting us or not? And can I go back to the management office and tell them it's still not fixed? Or is this simply a "it's not fixed to American standards" but is fixed to Chinese standards?

Aside from our bathrooms, the place is great. Here are a few pictures of our bedroom and our living room, which both have a floor-to-ceiling window with cool views of the city. Best of all, the cats seem happy; they have so much space to run around and love looking out the window. I'll post more pictures once our house is actually organized and decorated!

Our bedroom. 

Our living room.