Ah, the joys of owning an older home. When we bought our house, we saw there was damage to the walls in the shower. It's an old house, and the shower walls are made of laminated particle board. We figured it was a little rot, a problem, but we still loved the house. The home inspector also didn't mention any issue with this, just that there was damage to the walls. Ok, no biggie. We patched it up for the time being and went about other projects.
About a month ago we were shown exactly how wrong our assumptions were. My mother was watching AJ that day, and gave her a bath. AJ was just splashing around, having a grand ol' time. After the bath was over, my mother took her out and brought her to her room to get dressed without draining the tub. She gets AJ situated and goes back to drain the tub. It's now full of bugs. Little winged black bugs. She gets the Raid, sprays the bejeezus out of the tub and washes away the mess.
I get home from work and she tells me of the new situation. I look in the shower at the bugs, because by now more have appeared after her initial bug massacre. I then go to my handy laptop, look up the bugs to find out what they are. We have termites. Fantastic. After doing the heeby jeeby dance I make an appointment with Terminix.
Terminix comes and lets me know that the damage "could be worse". Not exactly reassuring when there are little black winged creatures coming out of the walls in my shower. Apparently we have at least five years worth of damage and it will take close to 2 years to kill the colony. Blech! Ok, that's fine. The Terminix man does it's thing, puts out bait sticks, wet treats the basement wood and after giving me one heck of a bill, is on his way.
We still have bugs in the shower. Lots of them at times, usually right after Alex's bath. I call Terminix. They say just wait it out, there's nothing that can be done, and they're doing no harm. No harm! I'm getting whiplash from watching all corners of the shower to make sure no invasion happens during bathtime.
So, after a month, we're still getting occasional "swarmers" making appearances in the tub. I now have Raid on the counter next to the toothpaste. I can't wait until the stars allign allowing us to tear out the old and put in the new. I'm going with actual tile this time. Something the buggies can't eat through!
