Crunch'n'Munch

Benito and I learned two two things rather quickly when we started house hunting:

1. It is nearly impossible to find your dream house.
   
2. No matter how perfect the house looks, there's probably something wrong with it.
   

Before I get to the second point, which is the subject of this post, I'll address the first point briefly. This isn't our dream house, but it has a lot of the things we were looking for.

1. It's in San Francisco,
   
2. there's more than one bathroom,
   
3. good kitchen layout,
   
4. it's in San Francisco,
   
5. good lighting,
   
6. yard,
   
7. it's in San Francisco,
   
8. close to public transportation,
   
9. lots of storage, and
   
10. it's in San Francisco.

Did I mention that our house is in San Francisco?

All things San Francisco, aside, the house is great. It will be fantastic once we actually move in, but for now it's great and will only get better.

During the inspection we discovered termites and wood rot. Having received estimates on the cost and options to repair the damages and deal with the termites, we decided that this house was worth it. For those of you who don't know, this house was a foreclosure. The reduced price of the house plus the cost of the repairs would still equal less than the price of a market rate house in the area. If it wasn't for that house, Benito and I wouldn't have been able to afford to live in the neighborhood. We were very fortunate to receive this opportunity (and have our real estate agents to thank) because if we didn't take advantage of it and make an offer, we'd most likely be living in the East Bay right now, no joke.



Repairs for wood rot are pretty straightforward. You remove the bad wood and replace it with good wood. But it's a little more complicated with termites. First off, you have to determine what type of termites you have and gauge the extent of damage and then cross your fingers in hopes that the damage isn't any worse when you open up the walls. We had dry wood termites which only like to eat bad wood (i.e. rotten wood). Because we only found damage in one area, outside the master bedroom window, we assumed that the termites were only in that area. So the course of action was to remove the termite damaged wood and all the wood rot on the house (we'd basically starve the termites to death by removing all appetizing wood from our house). We were excited about this option because it meant that we didn't have to pay for a costly fumigation. That is, until we found this when we pulled up a bit of the carpet in the master bedroom on the opposite side from the termite damage.



Yes, those are live termites eating the tack board. And all those black, brown tiny gravely things.. termite poop (which is nothing more than expelled wood remains)! The termites were alive and eating more than just one tiny corner of our house. As much as we wanted to avoid fumigation, this discovery changed everything. We needed to protect our house, home and investment. So we called in the cavalry.





Our neighbors called us Cirque de Soleil for a while, but at least we didn't get the Freddy Krueger tent. And after three days, they were done. Next up, dealing with the damage.