How to clean drywall dust from everything – furniture, plants, toaster? Help!?

Posted by admin on August 16th, 2011

My contractor didn't cover my makeshift kitchen/dining room with drop cloths that I provided. (While I was out of town.) now there is dust on everything (a lot!!) - upholstered chairs, antique clawfoot oak dining table (in the family for 110 years), tools, lamps, cd's, books, coffee pot, microwave, cereal boxes, even the toaster. I need to hire someone asap to clean this. please help. Thanks

Before cleaning anything - get pictures of all the mess.
Hire a service that deals with damage clean up.
Present all the bills from clean up to the contractor.
If he does not pay, take him to court.

Been there. Vacuum a lot, but fire that contractor first. No responsible contractor would do that. We brought in a lawyer when that was done to us. It is a terrible mess.

Vacuuming works, but vacuuming drywall dust is very hard on a vacuum and it will need frequent filter or bag changes to keep sucking and if it was my vacuum it would go in for servicing right after. A basic shop vac would be good to use for an initial vacuuming. If it dies because of the dust, at least it's cheap to replace. so it's best to vacuum only what you can't wipe down with a dry or damp cloth or brush off with a soft brush. with the valuable wood furniture, I'd use a furniture polish and be very careful because drywall dust is somewhat abrasive and can scratch a fine finish. use a clean side of the cloth often to avoid pushing dust across the furniture, do a preliminary wipe and then polish for real. Portable items could be taken outside or to the bathtub and shaken free of most of the dust or even washed there. And if you place a very powerful fan in a doorway or at a window and aim it outside, it will carry loose dust outside if it's floating in the air. just don't aim it straight at your neighbour's open living room window.

Any cleaning service--try to get an experienced independent rather than Molly Maid-- could handle this, and explain the extent of the problem fully when you engage them, but I hope your contractor sees the light in terms of helping you pay for this. I say help, because while he or she should certainly have kept the dust problem in mind, I think I would have done the covering myself before I went out of town, if at all possible. many contractors don't think of these things and it would come as no surprise to me if mine forgot. They're not all Mike Holmes. You could also talk to one of those restoration companies, the ones that clean up after fires and so on. I've never used one, but it would be worth asking if this is the kind of thing they handle.