I had the house tested for lead today. The entire detached garage, the lower half of the kitchen, every single window in the house, the inside of the cute little milk box that serves as our mailbox, and miscellaneous other surfaces tested positive. Awesome. The house has 23 windows in the main living areas (seems excessive, no? why is all that light and exposure to the outside necessary?). We didn't even bother testing any dust samples because they were almost guaranteed to be positive and it won't change the work we need to do.
We pretty much need to address all the positive areas because the paint is chipping in a lot of them. For the garage we may just have siding put on because it would match the rest of the house and we wouldn't have to worry about maintaining it. For everything but the windows we can easily put another coat of paint on and it will be fine. We can paint inside the windows too, but some of them are deteriorating pretty badly and it would be nice to replace them altogether. But, you know, 23. Gah.
The city has a grant program of up to $24,000 for homeowners with little kids who need to get rid of lead and don't have any money. Needless to say, the process is excruciating. Having learned about the program today, I have already been to City Hall, where I had to go in person to fill out a form to be mailed an application, then to the County Clerk to pick up two very intimidating forms because I need to make some changes to the deed to qualify, then to a legal documents store to get a blank deed, lord knows why. I get the sense that this process takes a while.
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