Handyman Finds Exhausted Drywall

Sometimes finding the cause of a problem is not an easy job, but after you finally discover the cause, you always feel stupid for not figuring it out earlier. This was exactly the case at Nancy’s house.

The facts I had were: the wall was an interior non-load bearing wall, between the kitchen and the living room, and there was no water source anywhere near the wall. I looked in the attic where the wall ended and found nothing. Okay, if you have already figured it out, you won’t feel as silly as I did after spending over an hour trying to find the problem, with out any luck. I told Nancy that the cause of the problem was not where I could see it, and I recommended I start by taking down the bad drywall.

Nancy agreed, so I got the tools I needed and tarped the living room floor. I started by knocking a hole in the drywall between the studs, and the smell rolled out of the wall with the very first hammer strike. As I made the hole bigger the smell got worse, and I also noticed the drywall was very greasy. Figured it out yet?

Well it took me until I had removed just about all of the damaged drywall, to find out the damage was caused by kitchen grease. Yes, Kitchen grease. When the house was built ten years ago the person that installed the vented range hood thought it was okay to let it exhaust into the wall cavity. The drywall job also turned into venting the range hood to the outside, so now the wall will not fill up with grease. This makes it a lot easier to keep paint on the walls...