Creepy Crawlies

We found out last week that termites had eaten through our wood floor in our bedroom. Upon close inspection it is a fairly small area measuring 1/4″ wide by 2 1/2″ long. Richard immediately called termite inspectors to come to our house and give us an estimate. Well, our first estimate is in and the total is about $2,000. We have someone else coming tomorrow but I don’t know if it will be much different than today’s quote.

The inspector said that the good news is that we caught it early. I guess that is relative to him as we still need to pay the $2,000 for the treatment and rip out a good portion of our wood floor and repair it. They will need to do some local treatment as well as around the perimeter of our house. Thank goodness we don’t need to tent our house because we would have to move our menagerie in with friends who already have 2 cats, 1 dog and a baby on the way. That would make for a very busy household, adding 3 cats, 2 toads, 2 kids and two more adults to the mix (thank you for the offer Monica and Brent).

Things always seem to go wrong when you can least afford it. We really can’t afford to have the termite treatment done but then again we can’t afford not to have it done. If left unattended the damage would become worse and it could cost a lot more than the $2,000 we have to pay to eradicate the colony of termites. I guess we just have to bite the bullet and figure out where we are going to come up with the money to pay for it.

Life sucks sometimes but I guess it would be pretty boring without the ups and downs.



This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 7th, 2004 at 3:41 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

5 Responses to “Creepy Crawlies”

  1. richard Says:
    September 7th, 2004 at 3:47 pm


    OK, I’m ready for boring for a while — what with $2,000 for termites, $2,000 for hospital/medical, $2,000 for mortgage, tens of thousands for credit card bills, not to mention the large boatloads of cash to fix the cracked driveway, the backyard, the shed, the great room insulation, the tile, the kitchen, the fence, house paint, etc. etc. etc.


  2. Monica Says:
    September 7th, 2004 at 4:06 pm


    Ahhh…isn’t home ownership fabulous? It’s always something. I do have to agree with the exterminator people…it is better that they made thier way through your floor. Much worse to find out that you have termites because your kids fall through to the basement.


  3. Richard Says:
    September 17th, 2004 at 1:34 pm


    Yeah, but at least if they’ve fallen through to the basement, we know where they are and what they’re doing!


  4. brent Says:
    September 17th, 2004 at 1:54 pm


    I think I would look into tenting the place, if I were you. It only takes a couple days and is probably close to the same cost. I’m almost positive that our house cost $1700 to tent before we moved in. Who knows where else those nasty things are hiding.


  5. Richard Says:
    September 19th, 2004 at 11:03 pm


    Ah, yes, but tenting is not for subterranean termites — which is our misfortunate infestation.