Termite damge to window frame

Termites can eat the equivalent of a two foot 2 x 4 in a year.  But they don’t eat all that wood in one place.  They leave paper thin remnants to use as a highway to the rest of the house.

A potential buyer told me about a house she had her eye on.  It was a foreclosure, so I went by to have a look.  The first thing that hit me when I opened the door was the odor of cat urine.  The carpets looked clean–perhaps they had been shampooed.  But whatever number of cats who had lived here previously didn’t see fit to use a litter box.  The pee was somewhere in the carpet, the pad, and probably the sub-floor.  If it’s in the sub-floor, even new carpet won’t help.  You have to strip out the carpet and pad, put an odor-killing sealer on the sub-floor, and then install new carpet.

The odor was severe, but treatable.  The rest of the house was in dire need of updating.  But could be fixed as well.  But if I were thinking of making an offer, it would be significantly less than the asking price.

But when I went outside I saw where the termites had been.  They had eaten the

Termite damage on siding.

siding and around a window frame.  It was more than just cosmetic damage here.  I saw the wall bowed a bit right under the window.  I’d seen termite damage like this before.  Long ago I set out to repair what looked to be a small amount of termite damage and ended up replacing all of the floor and 2 exterior walls in a living room.

If I were ever to buy a house that has termite damage, I would give myself a large margin for error when estimating repairs.  The problem with termites is that the damage is hidden.  You really don’t know what you are getting into until–well, until you get into it.  You have to start demolition before you know how far the damage goes.

With the amount of other good deals on the market, I’d much rather just go down the road and find a house that’s not at risk of being a money pit.