Last spring, I came home from work to find that our next-door neighbor below us had a large fumigation tent on their house. The first thing that crossed my mind was, when a house has termite problems, houses nearby may get termites, too. I asked the workers if they could inspect our house, and they referred me to another company for which they subcontract.
The first date for inspection we had to cancel because my mother wouldn't let the termite company into the house. A few weeks later, my mother was a little bit better, but the company owner and his son looked all through the outside of the house. There was some termite infestation on stairways on back, but he said that could be treated locally.
Then we went inside the house, to the rooms in the basement/bottom floor we use for storage. There was termite damage in the walls underneath the house, and inside the walls of much of the bottom floor. It would require fumigation, he said, to make sure the termites were completely exterminated.
Also, the garage was infested and would also need to be tented and fumigated.
Efforts to convince my mother that the fumigation was necessary went nowhere. She had heard horror stories from friends about the trouble and work of fumigation. How could we do all that work? Where was she going to stay?
Finally, when her emotional health started to come back, we called the termite company in September and scheduled for a date in the third week of October, because my daughter was scheduled for elective surgery that day, and my wife would be staying in the hospital with her. My mother found a local friend who offered to let her stay. I figured I would stay at the hospital or at the office, where we have a sofa and a futon.
At the time, the biggest logistical problem was where the cat was going to stay. I didn't want her to stay at the animal shelter (she doesn't go outside, so we aren't up to date with her shots) and a friend of my mom who had housesat her before for us was going to be out of the country for most of October. Most people who already have cats don't want to housesit another cat because it disrupts their own cats' territorial natures. And other people who didn't have their own cats were without pets for a reason- an allergy, prohibitions with their lease, etc. Finally, a week ago, a friend of my wife's agreed to watch her.
The termite company tells you that all food has to be double-bagged (unless it is unopened canned food or food in a jar), including food in the refrigerator and freezer. Plants and pets have to be taken outside the house. Medicine should be taken with you, along with baby mattresses (they tend to absorb the gas). Things that you don't consume, like toothpaste, etc., can be left out.
I called the utility company and scheduled to have the gas turned off the morning of the fumigation, as the termite company had recommended.
It didn't seem like there would be that much work, at least before the fumigation. But my wife said that all of our daughter's clothes, plush toys, diapers, strollers, etc. should either be bagged or taken to her parents' house. She brought home a lot of extra bags from work (the termite company gave us enough for the food). Two weekends ago, I took a carload of our daughter's stuff to her parents' house.
I told my mother, who can't handle much stress these days, that we didn't expect her to do too much, that she should pack her medicine and travel bag for her stay, and to take care of her own things.
My wife stopped work last week in anticipation of her upcoming delivery, and she said she would do most of the packing during the day while she was at home. We ended up going on a trip last weekend, while she was still able to travel, before the delivery date gets too close.
On Monday, I called the termite company to confirm the fumigation. The subcontractor called me later, and said they were having problems with a job that Monday because of a gas turn-off delay, and they would have to push us back to Friday, instead of Thursday. I thought, well, we might not get the gas turned back on Saturday because of the delay, and it might be Monday before we had hot water and a working stovetop and oven, but okay.
Things looked like they were coming along well on Monday night and Tuesday night. I came back home early on Wednesday afternoon, and I thought we were in good shape. But as we discovered, there was food in lots of places all over the kitchen, the dining room, the room in between. There was food down in the basement that needed to be bagged. My wife told me she was frustrated because she had put so much away, and there was still more food to bag. It was past nine P.M., we had run out of bags, and we needed to get up at five the next morning to go to the hospital.
I told my mother that she would need to put about ten grocery bags of food in her car until Saturday (our cars were already full). She had an emotional meltdown, and couldn't function. She disappeared to her bedroom for two or three hours. We found a way to rebag some of our daughter's things, and found two big plastic bags to bag the ten bags of food. We got to bed after 11 PM.
Thursday was a long day, with half a day at the hospital, waiting to talk to the doctor afterwards (everything went fairly well), and then a half day of work for me. My wife stayed at the hospital the whole day and struggled with worrying, boredom, and trying to comfort our daughter after the surgery. I went to the hospital after work with take-out dinner. Our daughter seemed very tired, but she was watching t.v. and the other kids there. I got home about 9 PM and did final touch-ups and helped my mom deal with her worrying.
Today, I had rescheduled my dentist's appointment from late September (because my mornings are no longer free because I take my daughter to preschool). I was planning to leave at 7, but my mother insisted that she couldn't stay to give the house keys and payment to the fumigation subcontractor, and that I needed to cancel my appointment. I told her she should just go to her friend's house, and we could hide the key and check and leave them for the fumigator. I finally convinced her to leave the house, and I left at 7:15.
After the dentist's appointment, I called the fumigator to make sure everything was all right (I had to call him earlier to tell him where the keys were). The company owner said there was a lot of wood next to the garage, and it had to be moved for them to be able to fumigate the garage. I thought that there would be no point to the fumigation unless all the termites were exterminated, so I told him I would come back to the house to clear it. I then called my boss to say I would be an hour or two late going to the office today.
After I started to move the firewood, I realized that those pieces of wood probably had termite infestation. I spent the next two hours moving pieces of firewood, a third of them about the size of a good-sized television set, into the garage using a hand dolly so they could also be fumigated, as well as raking and shoveling the wood chips and wood dust and leaves.
I also noticed the workers had attached their ladder up to the roof to the gutter, so the gutter was sagging everytime they went up or down. I complained that the gutter would be damaged, but the company owner told me there was no other place to attach the ladder, and they would re-attach the gutter if it came off. They promised me they would leave everything the way they found it.
They had probably a dozen large fans set up inside the house, and I noticed the tent for the house was not a giant one-piece tent, as I had imagined, but probably eight large pieces that they clipped together and adjusted to fit the shape of the house. There were also hoses running from their vehicle to the tent, which would need to stay on for about twenty-four hours.
I got to work a little after 12 noon, officially two hours and a little bit late. I later thought I should rent a trash dumpster to have the wood hauled away (the city would take away pieces up to thirty pounds, but chopping up the wood is beyond me). I called the fumigation company to ask if a dumpster would be in their way in the garage driveway. The owner told me that there was some more fencing and metal poles around the back of the garage that needed to be removed, and oh yeah, they had forgotten to do the garage.
So I guess the garage will be done early next week. My wife and daughter will be staying with her parents for a few days because of the lingering fumigation (we had hoped they would stay an extra day in the hospital where the doctors and nurses could observe them, but they said she was well enough to leave). I will be leaving to join them in a while, after traffic has calmed down.
I anticipate the clean-up in the house will not go as smoothly as we had imagined, but I think I have more realistic expectations now, after all the trouble.
