If you live in Kannapolis, you may consider a few patches of mold to be just the result of living in a moisture-prone part of the country. But don’t be taken in by that greenish appearance. Mold is just a fungus, and a public health risk at that. When your home gives off a musty odor, you have Mold—possibly several types of it, since different kinds like to socialize in close quarters. These kinds of Mold don't respect property lines, either. They’ve been known to hang out in that portion of your house that’s closest to your next-door neighbor’s house. And like the many colors of the rainbow, Mold comes in various types that throw off different odors.
Think about a mold, often found in hidden, unreachable places, that thrives in the corners of our homes. It likes to hide beneath damp carpeting, behind walls, and in any other spot that provides both privacy and moisture. It doesn't lack friends, either; it often cohabits with a variety of equally spiteful fungi, as well as dust mites, not to mention our old friends cat and dog dander. On top of all that, any and all kinds of mold love to come cheer up their unfortunate human hosts as we breathe in and out. When we're deciding what to do about them, mold and its pals, our first question is probably this: Should we tackle this problem ourselves, or should we call in professionals?
An analogy from gardening will help illustrate what we try to do. When a weed starts growing in a flower bed, it doesn't just sprout above ground: it sends roots deep into the soil and spreads out underground, where it can do a lot of damage before the homeowner ever sees a first leaf. Mold in a home is like that. It's insidious, and it can get a really good hold on things before you ever notice that it's even there. We're the neighbor, in Kannapolis, N.C., who knows, more or less, what to pull up and what to let be, and we have the advantage of looking at the scene from both directions—inside and outside the house.