My nightmare started in June of 2003. At that time, my husband (at the time) and my two children (ages of 2 1/2 and 6 months) moved into a rental house on a barrier island outside Charleston, SC. At the time, we were building a new house on the island. Although the rental house seemed clean and safe, I always had a bad 'feeling' about the house and a desire to be 'out'.
My children and I went through a year of recurrent illnesses. To that point, I had heard of friends going through sinus infections, but I did not really know what that meant. That certainly changed as we began to fight off one sinus infection after another. My husband was a pilot, and he did not seem to be impacted by the house. He was either protected by his recovery time away (he was gone half the month) or by his immune system.
I wasn't sure why the house was making us sick (I would learn years later), but I was fairly sure it was the house. As we were building a new house, I began to study all about healthy house building. We were also trying to build an eco-friendly house. The seeds of DwellSmart were born. I would ask questions about things like formaldehyde, and people would look at me like I had two heads. I needed a store like DwellSmart and over time, I thought some others might need a DwellSmart also.