Black Mould Patches found under Wallpaper...

[legless]

Hi there, I need some help with this.

A while ago, about nearly 4 years ago, we had our bedroom decorated. It cost a lot of money to have it done, it's been fine for a while but recently we have noticed there's some dark patches now under the wallpaper on the wall which is an outside wall at the front of our house. For some reason it's gone mouldy underneath the paper and it's gone into patches around certain areas. It's happened where we used to have some long curtains to the floor, we've taken the curtains down now and we're going to have them shortened so they don't go all the way down to the carpet.

We're not sure what to do with it now, whether we should have the wallpaper taken off and put some new on. It looks a bit of a mess now, I hope you can see it properly in the pictures I've taken. We're thinking that maybe trapped air around the back of where the curtains were has caused some kind of mould underneath the paper. We're not sure why this has happened and we're wondering if anybody can shed some light into this problem. We had to pay our last decorator a lot of money to have this room done and after just 4 years it's all gone black patchy and it's a shame. We did have a bit of trouble with the last decorator, he papered over the wall originally with lining paper and painted it but he didn't prepare the wall properly first and didn't sand the wall down and it looked a mess when he'd done it and when he'd painted it you could see all the lumps all over the wall. So to cover up the lumps we had him come back and paper over it again with this current paper which looked better for a while but now it looks a mess again.

We've just gone and bought a small radiator to try and keep the wall warmer at the moment and thought that possibly it was cold the wall and was causing this to happen underneath the paper. Whether it's because it's a cold wall we're not sure but it is the outside wall of the house.

Any help or advice would be much appreciated, many thanks.

 

[endecotp]

How do you dry your washing? Do you have extractor fans in the kitchen and bathroom? Is this a north-facing wall?

 

[Bosswhite]

You say the wallpaper has been up for four years, dont think you can blame the decorator now,

possibly a cold spot hidden by the Curtains, again condensation does not help

 

[^woody^]

Mould feeds on the starch in paste. Sometimes the paste is left on the front of the paper and not cleaned, leading to mould.

In any case, the paper needs to be stripped back to bare plaster, and the plaster treated with a biocidal wash, before redecorating.

 

[legless]

How do you dry your washing? Do you have extractor fans in the kitchen and bathroom? Is this a north-facing wall?

We dry our washing in a condenser tumble dryer in the dining room which is a fair way away from this bedroom. We do have extractor fans in the bathrooms, we have 2 bathrooms. We use a hood extractor in the kitchen although we got a new one a few months ago, it is a Samsung extractor but it doesn't seem to be very affective because when I'm boiling pans on the cooker top in the kitchen, it's not extracting all the steam it seems and a lot of the steam is just going up into the ceiling of the kitchen. We bought the cooker hood extractor from Currys but I'm wondering if there's something wrong with it and the fan unit inside isn't working as it should be. I'm not really sure whether or not it is a good extractor, we got somebody to fit it for us a builder/joiner we know and he did a good job just wondering if this unit is faulty but we're stuck with it now. No the wall is facing South West not North.

 

[legless]

You say the wallpaper has been up for four years, dont think you can blame the decorator now,

possibly a cold spot hidden by the Curtains, again condensation does not help

Yes you're right we couldn't blame the decorator now at this point. He didn't do a very good job of the wall when he did it but we got him back to sort it out and papered over what he'd already done, as far as I know he just papered over the lining paper we'd had put on there and then painted and it seemed alright for a while until this has happened but it's a good job we've taken the curtains down because it wasn't helping and air was getting trapped behind them where you can see the patches.

 

[legless]

Mould feeds on the starch in paste. Sometimes the paste is left on the front of the paper and not cleaned, leading to mould.

In any case, the paper needs to be stripped back to bare plaster, and the plaster treated with a biocidal wash, before redecorating.

The mould in this case seems to be behind the paper, underneath, not on the outside. I've had a good look at the paper on the outside and there doesn't appear to be mould on it, these patches are coming from underneath so something is obviously wrong we've just got to decide what to do with it. I gather this isn't just going to go away? Also it is going to get worse if we leave it. Because I don't have any wallpapering skills then I'm going to have to get somebody to come in and do it all again this wall which is going to be more money and it's a shame, we had to pay the last guy a fortune, I don't think we'd have him back again he was an accountant before he got into decorating and wanted a job with less stress. He wasn't the best decorator, when he did the wall originally it looked a mess after several days, all lumps and bumps we wasn't happy. He came back to put it right but that was the last we saw of him after that we take it he wasn't very happy about having to redo it again but well he should have prepared the wall better really it looked pretty bad.

 

[Chri5]

No wall decorator prep or finishing work will prevent damp.

On the outside might the pointing to the bricks be failing? Are there gutters or downpipes that are broken, overflowing or leaking?

Might the property brick be so old that they have become porous and need a water seal treatment?

Are there any obvious signs external water staining? Salts on bricks, darker colouring on some bricks?