At the same time he was working on the roof, Conrad from Bay Area Pest Control came to help us try to locate a very dead and very stinky rat. I asked him to look at the roof rafter, and I watched a pained look come across his face as his shoulders slumped. "I am afraid," he said, "that you have a very lively colony of dry-wood termites, and where there is one colony, there are others." Great! Undesirable Florida wildlife: cockroaches -- check; rats -- check; snakes -- check; termites -- check. The only thing we have not come across yet is an angry armadillo or a fat alligator in the back yard!
Conrad told us that the best thing to do was to get the entire house "tented" and fumigated. He assured us that the fumigation would take care of not only every termite, but also of every other bug or rat that happened to be alive within the walls of Gladys. Strangely, we had gotten a bid earlier in the day from Conrad's company for prevention of subterranean termites. They wanted $899 for that, and now Conrad was telling us that the tenting would cost us another $1000. Gladys is a tough old broad, but having all of these treatments to keep her going really is starting to wear on both our budget and our psyche. We would have to pack up -- once again -- and leave the house for three days. That would be find and dandy if we had others in town who could put us up, but right now our only option is a hotel.
We feel we have no choice. The termites are here, even though our house inspector in March told us that the house was termite free, and we cannot let them just consume Gladys from the inside out. We have to take action. We told Conrad that if we had to do the tent, then we could not afford to do the subterranean termite treatment two. (Wouldn't you know that even the $#%@ termites come in two species!) He went back to the company, talked to the boss, and came back with a deal to have both treatments done at a reduced rate since the subterranean drilling had already been done once in the past for Gladys. Conrad said he could see where someone had drilled the treatment holes in the front porch and back cement slab, so someone tried to protect the house sometime in its history.
So, next week we will be out of the house from Tuesday through Thursday, living once again at a hotel in Dunedin. We will try to use the time as relaxation time to catch up on a little reading and to try to explore this wonderful, quirky city. By the way, Conrad never did find the smelly rat carcass. The bad part about having 10.5 inches of new insulation is that when something dies, it is not easy to find. The good news is that Mother Nature takes care of such things in a matter of days in this heat, so whatever dies in the attic soon becomes mummified.
Now on to good news. The soffits are fixed, the rotting fascia boards are replaced by sound boards, the roof rafters are repaired, and Gladys now has gutters! I almost want it to rain just so we can see how the gutters handle the downpours that we get here in Florida. We won't have a waterfall at our front or back doors, and we may save the back door from totally rotting away before next year. This house should have had gutters 51 years ago when it was built. The contractors do not mess around down here. While 4" gutters are standard in Wisconsin, here we have 5" gutters (and we would have had 6" gutters if we had had a tile roof). We have guards to redirect the waterfalls away from the corners, so bring the rains on. We want to see what this thousand dollars really bought us.
The other good news was that I really gave the polished floors a badly-needed scrubbing today, and they came out shining like a mirror on a sunny day. They were easy to clean, and they look great. I am happy with the results.
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| Arrangement A |
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| Arrangement B |
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