I didn’t know what this strange woman’s deal was, but the topic of her father was obviously a sore spot, and I knew I shouldn’t push the issue any further. I was here to do a job, not pry into this poor woman’s personal life. Even though she’d been the one who had brought up her dad, and I was just trying to make polite conversation.
Women.
“Sure,” I agreed with the fakest smile I could muster. “Take me to the termites, and I’ll take a quick peek. With any luck, I can be outta your hair in no time.”
“Great,” Karla agreed in a too enthusiastic tone, and then she began to walk down one of the mansion’s hallways. “This way, please.”
I followed Miss Nash across the hardwood floor of the mansion. It creaked under my feet with every step I took, and I instantly knew we were looking at some sort of minor structural damage, at the very least.
We passed by a large room off to the left on our way to the laundry room, and I couldn’t help but take a quick glance inside.
It was obviously supposed to be a library, and just like the rest of the rooms in the mansion, this one had ten-foot-tall vaulted ceilings atop white and blue walls. However, the entirety of the back wall was made up of built-in oak bookshelves packed to the brim with texts that looked like they’d seen better days. There was a desk at the very center of all the shelves, but I didn’t have much time to inspect it before we moved on to the next room.
Finally, Karla came to a halt at the end of the hallway, grabbed the handle of a small door, and tossed it open. Then she stepped in, turned on the light, and motioned to the interior with about as much enthusiasm as a racehorse who was long past retirement.
“Here it is,” she grumbled. “Our laundry room, in all its glory.”
My jaw nearly hit the floor. This was the nicest “laundry room” I’d ever seen. The thing was bigger than the freaking master suite in my apartment.
All along the right side of the space was a gray marble countertop that ran down the side of the wall, with a white porcelain farm sink and nearly a dozen cabinets underneath. Above the counter was a single minimalist piece of artwork, a red canvas with yellow, orange, and purple paint splatters strewn across its front.
You know, the kind of thing a dude creates in his garage with ten-dollar supplies from Hobby Lobby and then turns around and sells for two-hundred dollars a pop. Rich people always ate that stuff up.
On the other end of the room, atop the pristine white tile flooring, sat a front-loading washer and dryer.
“Wow… ” I whistled to myself.
“There seems to be an issue over by the washer,” Karla explained. “Whenever I walk over there to try and do some laundry, I’m afraid the floor is gonna fall out from under me.”
“I’ll take a look.” I nodded and pulled the pen from behind my ear. “What I’m gonna do is a full inspection of this floor. Usually, if termites are present underneath a laminate surface like this one, it’ll look like water damage. Bubbles, sags, and sometimes even little tiny holes show up where they’ve been. Have you seen anything like that lately?”
Karla lowered her eyes and let out a deep sigh.
“I thought that was just from the washing machine,” she grumbled. “The laminate around the washer has been like that for a while now, but I never really thought anything of it.”
“Uff-da.” I whistled. “If it’s been like that for a while, and you feel like your floor’s starting to sag… I can already tell you it’s not gonna be pretty when I start prying up the floor.”
“Shit.” Karla crossed her arms over her chest. “I knew I shouldn’t have let it go for so long. I just got so caught up in work lately… ”
“It’s not a big deal,” I reassured her. “We don’t know the extent of the damage yet. Let me get in there and check it out, and then we’ll go from there.”
First thing’s first, I needed to see this massive weak spot she was talking about. So, I sauntered over to the nice rug in front of the washer and dryer and instantly felt the floor groan underneath me. The wood underneath the laminate gave nearly half an inch as I stepped on it, and I physically cringed at the thought of what was under this carpet.
I took a step back, reached down, and removed the rug.
Yikes.
Staring back at me was a gash in the laminate nearly a foot long and about as wide as my hand.
Definitely termites.
“Yeah, you got ‘em alright,” I explained as I pointed to the gash in the floor.
“Fucking stupid,” Karla muttered to herself as she buried her face into her palm.
“Don’t beat yourself up,” I chuckled and pulled the flat-head screwdriver from my belt. “It could happen to anybody. But, I will warn you… it’s about to get worse. I hope you don’t mind replacing this.”
I slid the narrow end of the flat-head underneath the edge of the gash, got a bit of leverage, and then pushed upward.
The laminate strip popped up with a gnarly crack, and debris from the brittle material scattered across the floor like the world’s worst confetti. Underneath was the baseboards of the floor, and they had been chewed beyond recognition. It was so bad, in fact, that I could have sworn I saw a few pinpricks of light rising up through the floor where the termites had chewed all the way through.
This wasn’t just bad, it was downright dangerous.
“Oh, my god… ” Karla gasped.
“Yeah,” I mused, “I wouldn’t stand in this spot anymore. Like, I’m halfway tempted to move your washer and dryer right now, because I don’t know how these things haven’t fallen through already.”
“Shit,” Miss Nash grumbled. “Can you get rid of the little bastards?”
“I can set some traps and treat the soil around your house,” I explained, “but if this is as bad as I’m guessing it is, we’re gonna have to bring out the big guns. And by that, I mean the full shebang. Tent fumigation.”
“And what about the floors themselves?” Karla rubbed her temples with frustration.
“I’m not a floor guy.” I shrugged. “But I’d imagine you’re gonna have to get a contractor out here to assess the damage and see if anything can be filled in and salvaged. If not, I could see this costing a pretty penny, in my honest opinion. But I still need to see just how bad this infestation is… ”
Karla lifted up her head, dragged her hands down her cheeks as she rolled her eyes, and then turned around.
“I’m going to call my contractor,” she announced. “He’s usually really good about getting out here ASAP.”
The beautiful brunette woman disappeared down the hallway, and I got back to work.
I pried up a few more of the strips of laminate, set them to the side, and clicked my tongue.
This was way worse than I’d thought. The damage stretched almost the entire width of the room, in a giant eye-shaped pattern.
There was a silver lining, however. The damage seemed to be contained to this singular pattern, and nothing more. Strange… I’d never seen any termites chew up a floor in a perfect shape like this.
Maybe this was the only tasty wood in the house?
Either way, I prayed there wasn’t a support beam underneath this spot. Because if there were any, they would be about as useful as a femur in somebody with brittle bone disease.
Slowly, I stood back up to my feet, and then froze in place when the floorboards underneath me groaned once more. I quickly scribbled down some notes on my clipboard, slipped the pen back behind my ear, and then put away my screwdriver.
If there were termites in this room, then they were probably all over in the crawlspace, and God only knows where else. I needed to get down in there as soon as possible so I could see the true extent of the damage.
I lifted up my foot to take a step and heard a loud crack underneath my planted leg.