The motherload

We've had a carpenter ant problem on and off since the day we moved into this house. Within 4 months Mike and I were ripping the roof off and replacing it ourselves because we didn't have the cash to pay a roofer. We'd had this Ant problem you see, ants foraging around our house like they owned the place. Sure we'd spent a few hundred to have an exterminator come and fog the place, but we still had ants, just instead they were dying ants crawling through our living space on their last legs.

It was during this period I became a Carpenter ant expert. I followed them through the house in hopes of finding their nest. Ants like wet wood, so if there's a leak somewhere in your house, in a wall, on the roof, under a toilet, behind a sink, this is where the ants will be. I spent 4 months searching for those bastards until one day I noticed a soft spot in the eaves over our garage. So naturally I got a broom handle and poked at it. Billions of ants and rotted wood came tumbling out. It was so bad these ants had actually eaten thru the trusses in our roof over the garage. Everyone asks me, "Didnt you have a pest inspection before you bought the house"? We did, but we did this in February when the house was for sale and weren't able to close until April 15, when the weather gets warm enough for ants to take over your life.

We thought it was odd when we moved in and there were ant traps under appliances and in closets. This apparently had been an ongoing issue the previous owners "forgot" to disclose on the sellers agreement in the place where it asks "Any history of carpenter ants?"  Nope they said, no way, ants, here? Never.

The thing is the carpenter ants we found had been there a long time, a VERY long time. They were the size of my hand, with wings, and like a decade worth of a wood tunneled cities  built into our house. This was an old settlement. We ended up suing for damages (we had other issues besides our insect roomates). I learned this: Don't sue a State trooper with a pregnant wife, no matter how right you are and how much evidence you have, the judge will think you're a liar and you will not win.

Court went something like this:

Me: Well how do you  explain the six ant traps found stationed all over the house?, and the fact that you had called Orkin pest control for ant control just last year?

Previous owners: Well, you see we had dogs and in the event they might carry an ant on their backs into the house we set traps just as a precautionary measure.

Me: Why didn't you disclose that you're underground sprinkler doesn't even work and instead use it as a major selling point?

9 month pregnant previous owner: I had brain cancer and we didnt have time to think about underground sprinkling!!

I couldn't win, and I didn't.

So we roofed the house ourselves. I don't recommend this. roofing is a terrible job. We were too poor to afford to rent the nail gun so we pounded each shingle in by hand. We were too poor to afford a dumpster so we made a pile behind our house and then every week for a little over a year, Mike pulled our Waste Management residential dumpster over to our pile and topped it off with our old roof. All winter, all spring, all summer, and winter again, he did this. I still cant get grass to grow in this spot. It took us 2 1/2 months to finish the roof and it was during this time that I miraculously became pregnant...with twins! I honestly couldn't even remember making Darby and Cooper, I was soooo tired during this time. I worked 45 hours a week, came home and roofed until the sun went down.

The ants disappeared, for a while, almost three years actually. Theyre back this year and they mean business. This time I hired a guy from Craigslist. I like him, he's got a third day ringtone so I thought that was a good sign. He's charging me $25 an hour plus materials and has no idea how long its going to take him to fix the problem. He did find the motherload of ants today right where I suspected, the eaves over our front door, so thats outta there. We also have a mold issue in a few of the bedrooms, he's going to cut all the drywall out and replace that too. Mike suggested just painting over the mess and selling the house like the previous owners did to us. But I can't, I couldn't do that to another family, so we'll spend thousands on work that we'll never really enjoy, well unles you count living without ants or mold joyous, which I sort of do at this point.

It seems like just yesterday that everyone was saying to me "Buy a house, Why throw your money away renting when for the same cost you could own!" Thats not a true statement. Home ownership sucks, maybe I'll change my mind in a few years , but today I'm ready to find an apartment and take the 30,000 loss on my house.