My wall is growing something.

April 29, 2009 6:29 AM

What is growing on my wall?

I live in a rental house which generally speaking is in excellent shape with no problems to speak of. Until today. When I woke up, I looked up at the wall above my bed and noticed this. Another photo here.

The paint is bubbling pretty badly up there, and all around the edges is this....something. But what is it? A mould? A fungus? Something paint does that I don't know about? If it is one of these things, should I be overly concerned about it? Just spray it with some bleach? I'm at a loss on how to proceed.

posted by sah to Home & Garden (8 answers total)

Best answer: That looks like water damage, not necessarily mold or fungus (yet). Paint bubbles like that when it gets really wet. Have you been having rain? Are you on the top floor? You can see the drip marks as well from where the wetness has dripped down the walls.
posted by archimago at 6:33 AM on April 29, 2009

It looks like it's caused by water and is some weird mixture of plaster, paint, water and mould. If it's on the ceiling (it's on the ceiling, right?) then it could be being caused by standing water from a leaky roof or pipe pooling on the plasterboard above and seeping through. If its on the wall, then could be the same thing, just rotated 90 degrees. Either way, sanding it off or re-covering is probably only going to solve half the problem. You need to find out what's causing the leak.
posted by Jofus at 6:35 AM on April 29, 2009

It almost looks like water is being damned up there. I had something like that happen in my kitchen. It looked a lot like the second picture. I poked at it and then water went everywhere.... :>(
posted by Mastercheddaar at 6:35 AM on April 29, 2009

water of hydration?
posted by Drasher at 7:19 AM on April 29, 2009

yup, that's water damage
posted by Jupiter Jones at 7:35 AM on April 29, 2009

The house I live in has this stuff on the ceiling of one room. It's the room directly below a kitchen that had a small unnoticeable leak in the caulking around the sink, and water was seeping down through the under-sink cabinet and saturating the inside of the ceiling. I assumed the bubbly stuff was re-crystallized salt from the building materials, but basically it just means something's leaking into that part of the ceiling.

Tell the landlord; when ceilings collapse it's a huge pain in the butt and really wrecks your stuff! In the meantime, if it gets worse or starts to look swollen (like an animal's belly, kind of), you should move your bed out from under there & put a tarp over your stuff. If it collapses you're looking at several buckets of water and who-knows-what crap from the building materials, gushing down on your room.
posted by pseudostrabismus at 7:41 AM on April 29, 2009

I had this happen in an apartment I was living in. I (and the maintenance guy) was lucky that it was the plumbing associated with the shower/tub above mine that was leaking, because there was only the damage to the ceiling and the leak to repair. if this is in your bedroom, you may want to invest in some plastic dropcloth to protect your stuff.
posted by ArgentCorvid at 7:53 AM on April 29, 2009

Response by poster: Well it sounds like a strong consensus on water damage. The landlords have been informed. For what it's worth, it's on an outside wall near the ceiling. Thank you everyone!
posted by sah at 6:34 PM on April 29, 2009