So... Blood Has To Be The Single Worst Thing To Clean Up...

Discussion in 'Spam Heaven' started by dementia, Dec 23, 2008.

  1. dementia

    dementia Well-Known Member

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    So... I was asked by my uncle about a week ago to come help him clean up after this mess his tenants left behind on his rental property... and I didn't know what it was, but he said I should come with clothes I won't need again, and I was like okay... probably just some patching up of holes and painting and such. Well it turns out about 2 weeks ago his tenant caught his wife cheating on him. Killed his wife, his teenage son (about my age), and his young child (about elementary school age) and then shot himself in one of the bedrooms of the house. Now I went over there yesterday, but all the rooms were closed, so we were just working on the bathrooms, replacing the caulking / sealing, cleaning out the lime from the grout, cleaning off the windows, mirrors, sink, etc. that kind of stuff. Today I go over there about... 5 hours ago and he shows me what the real mess is. He gives me a doctors mask and tells me to put it on and gets me a wood workers apron and has me put that on over my paint clothes and asks me if blood bothered me, I of course said no. He opened the room to where the teenage boy resided. All over the carpet, bed, curtains, tv, stereo, etc. was just blood covered. It made me gag a little even and the people who know me know I watch those types of videos online and laugh from them. This place was absolutely grotesque, mottled carpetting with red pools of blood. So we got to work...

    We first tore up the carpetting, found that the mat underneath was also blood stained so we tore that up, then we found out that the wood flooring underneath was blood stained, oh well, not much we can do about that. As it turns out, the blood soaked through the floor boards and into the room below as well, so the first thing we did was start up a hole in the floor boards of upstairs with a hammer and chisel then sawed out about a 4x4' square from the ground where the main blood stain was. We threw that board out and were going to have to patch that up in the next few days. After we removed the carpet, the mat, and the piece of wood, we decided to start moving out the furniture. Most of this being oak wood furniture, just stained with blood. We tried to stand some of it off because my uncle loves oak and wanted to try to preserve it, but after 2 weeks the blood had already soaked deep enough into the wood that removing it was out of the question.

    After we removed all the floording, all the items, and all we had left were white walls stained with blood we got to work on sanding down parts of the wall with heavy coatings of it and that failed pretty horribly (we were going to paint over it anyways, he just didn't want any obtrussions from the blood showing up on the new paint job). Even with a thick coat of paint primer it still was very easily visible (for those of you who don't know, when you paint you start with either a white coat of primer, or a dark bluish purple color, variant on how you are going to paint the room). We went with the dark blue color because we were intending to paint it dark blue, and the cardinal color still shined vibrantly through the primer.

    So yeah... long story short... blood has got to be the biggest pain in the arse to clean up.
     
  2. .//XeN-

    .//XeN- Well-Known Member

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    I've always been under the impression that there were companies that came round after the police did their thing and cleaned up crime scenes. Must not always be the case though.

    And yeah blood is a bitch to clean up, and that's from my experience of never cleaning more than a small stain. Must be pretty ----ty for your uncle
     
  3. dementia

    dementia Well-Known Member

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    Nope, you can hire companies to come and do that. But if a crime scene takes place on private property its up to the owner to take care of getting it cleaned up.
     
  4. .ZERO

    .ZERO Nigga wit a PSD

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    D:
     
  5. Sanity Penguin

    Sanity Penguin My sex is on fire

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    Huh, had the same idea as Xen.
    I can imagine it must have been pretty overwhelming when the door first popped open. Also, wasn't there a stench connected to blood? If I remember correctly from my university classes of medicine, it starts to smell after a while.
     
  6. BlackTerror

    BlackTerror Well-Known Member

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    His uncle gave him a doctors mask.
    Man that must of been hell to see, but yeah not only is blood hard to clean, it smells after.
     
  7. dementia

    dementia Well-Known Member

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    Yup, the chemical mixture sparked up a smell, but because its been sub-zero temperatures all day long the last 2-3 weeks it didn't quite have the heat necessary to create a stench. Most of it was dried up into the hard wood and dry wall as well, so the smell wasn't as abundant as it would have been within a few days of the murders.
     
  8. Jynx_

    Jynx_ Banned from GR

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    Worlds worst job: Sucide clean up agency.
    I saw it on Sky a while ago, they filmed them cleaning a bathroom after a shotgun suicide.
     
  9. .//XeN-

    .//XeN- Well-Known Member

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  10. Sanity Penguin

    Sanity Penguin My sex is on fire

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    Yeah, not a garuantee there. Those things just filter out the bacterias, they don't really stop a smell. And even so, dead people have a very very strong smell. This was just the blood of them, but still (given the right circumstances), that can cook up quite a smell.

    btw, the blood isn't coming through the paint or something? I know using dark colours will prolly fix it, but when you check closely, aren't there traces left or something?
     
  11. dementia

    dementia Well-Known Member

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    Yeah, I don't think I've smelt anything worse than the mixture of bleach, blood, and a febreeze smelling industrial cleaner. The house was also about 30 years old and the bathrooms, for the most part, went without any upgrades ot any real cleaning. The grout was black on the bottom, just coated in lime, the door itself had a lime sheet so thick I had to scrub it with a wire brush to break it up, the caulking (the sealant used around the bath of toilets / showers / baths and for the tiles and such, generally white, the non-grout stuff) was corroded so much the bottom 2 feet or so was black. It was seriously like a scene out of a horror movie.

    The family had been living there for about... 5-7 years without any real investigations on my uncles side to see how they were treating it. Most of the windows were broken, 2 of the doors had been repeatedly stabbed by what looks like a kitchen knife (not like a butcher knife, but a steak knife), linoleum was pulled up, the few spots with tile the tile was actually cracked (which requires a lot of pressure to do, I myself can put on my work boots and slam my foot into tile as hard as I want and it won't break once its laid down and cemented to the ground). The walls of the house had holes from being punched, etc.

    I guess my uncle learned the hard way, but jeez man, I didn't even conceive that it was more or less reality, especially not in the area of town the house is in. The town I used to live in has an average home value of about 350k, average salary is 50k+ per individual and everything, so its a relatively upscale area.

    No clue when I am going back, I would still be there but my uncle had a brunch to attend, so I suppose I get to head back whenever he gives me a call.

    The dead people were long gone, this was just the blood obviously. The bodies were gone the night of the murders. The blood *is* showing through the primer, we didn't have enough time to do a second coat or trim for paint or anything, but even through a thick single coat of paint primer you can see vividly the spot on the wall where the stains were.
     
  12. Neuron

    Neuron Senior Member

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    Apparently Coke is good for cleaning blood stains. =P
     
  13. xlink

    xlink GR's Tech Enthusiast

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    note to self: use lube next time, less cleanup.
     
  14. Zohair

    Zohair Formerly zohBOT

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    Hmm.. The story sounds very filmy but it is after all an incident that in fact took place and its tragic, to be honest I wouldn't have agreed on even visiting a place where crime of any sort (involving murder) had taken place. You have a brave heart to go there and then face a pool of blood, but it doesn't really bother me as much as it would have a few years ago if I had read that you went through this.

    That said, bravo and I can't really imagine how much of a pain in the arse it really is to clean up that much of Blood, but I do hope the day never comes.

    Oh btw, did you get paid for doing this job or your Uncle gave you a dinner treat instead? :P
     
  15. dylan5102

    dylan5102 Senior Member

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    how much did you get paid for the job?
     

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