Why Linda, I heard something about a mould problem?

Well, you heard correctly. As English people are not able to build houses properly, mould is a common problem in this country. So let me enlighten you about the basic principles of mould infestations.

On the above picture, you can see a rather harmless infestation with some form of, as yet unidentified, grey mould (my guess is it's either Ulocladium or Alternaria) which was hiding behind the wardrobe in my room. Though it was hiding, its presence did not go completely unnoticed as it gave of a rather distinctive smell. After consulting a mould expert (better known as Google), I decided to tackle the problem with bleach, which appeared to work like a charm (though it did replace the mould-smell with a rather bleachy smell for a few days).

Problem solved you might say at this point. Well, not so much really. You see, as I mentioned earlier, this was a rather harmless infestation as the mould only manifested itself on top of the paint. The problem gets to a whole new level once it gets under said paint, an example of which can be seen in the picture on the left. As might be obvious from the picture, I've tried to tackle this problem before, but the mould fought back and decided to make a reappearance in the new year. Our mould expert had warned us that this might happen, and the only thing one can do at this point is call in a professional and let him redo the whole wall.

So, while we're waiting for that to happen, I bleached my wall again today (result on the right), as the smell of mould was reappearing, and it just looks absolutely gross. Although I must admit that cleaning it is possibly even more gross (and no, those dark spots are not some leftover bits of mould, that's were I scraped all of the paint of and actually reached the bricks making up the wall).