The Un-Renovators: Carpenters You Don't Want in Your Home
by Candice Mancini
Home Improvement Ideas Columnist
You're hearing noises in the night. It's giving you a creepy-crawly sensation all over and you can't sleep. You hear it in the daytime too: tiny feet marching, little jaws chomping, humming, and buzzing.
You may be hosting one of the three unsavory carpenters, unwelcome visitors to any home: carpenter ants, carpenter bees, and carpenter beetles.
The Remodeling they Do: Boring and More
Unwelcome or not, these insects work hard on your home, but you probably won't like the remodel they have in mind. Carpenter ants bore into wood to make their nests, which can cause serious structural damage to your home. And, as any realtor knows, structural damage is like the plague in home sales.
Carpenter bees are more strictly outdoor renovators, often found in home siding or decks. Like their ant renovator friends, they also bore into wood to make their nests, causing a good deal of damage to wooden structures.
Our final guest renovator, the carpenter beetle, remodels entirely different parts of your home. These fine friends will leave their larvae to feast on the dead-animal products in your house. These include wool, silk, leather, fur, natural-bristle hair brushes, pet hair, and feathers. As they are feeding on these products, they will cause big chunks of, say, your rug to disappear.
How to Remove these Guests from Your Home
No need for tact here. Give them the boot! Or better yet, find an expert who can do it the right way. When calling around for estimates, don't make price your only factor in choice. Ask if they are certified. For instance, if they are certified in wood-destroying organisms (to take care of our beetle and bee friends) it means they have been licensed by the Department of Environmental Protection to use the pesticides needed to do the job.
Or if the structural damage, holes in carpets, and creepy-crawliness of these guests don't disturb you, invite them to the dinner table to thank them for their remodeling services. After all, they are working for free.
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About the Author
Candice Mancini is a writer, a teacher, and a homeowner always on the lookout for a good contractor. She has an M.A. in Education and B.A. in English and history.
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