CREEPY CRAWLIES

Have you ever seen a Craigslist posting that made you jump out of your chair? Yeah me too. But this one was certainly too good to be true. My dream haul became a nightmare. Now, this happened in July. I'm just now able to even talk about it without getting upset. 

Look at that headboard! I got a whole bedroom set for $300. A bed, dresser, vanity, nightstand and a chair. It was all a little rough. The sweet (or so I thought) old lady who sold it to me said it had a little water damage. And that's what it looked like. So I was thrilled to take on the challenge of patching this stuff up and making it look nice. 

Wow, just look at that detail. I wish I had taken more before pictures, but I got right to work. All of this stuff looked pretty hearty. Big heavy antique furniture. But why was it so light?

Because it was hollowed out by termites. Now, I knew that these guys could do some serious damage to a house, but I never even thought about them eating furniture. I always figured that people use their furniture and they would notice something like this. 

Being the optimist I am, I began ripping away at the hollow spots, hoping to fill them...yeah right. And then I saw something. Peeking up at me was a little white booger thing. A LIVE termite. Holy crap. I sped out to HD and grabbed the concentrated termite killer (the kind that can treat a football field).

So I did what any furniture Macgyver does and I rummaged through the kitchen to find a meat injector thingy. Then filled it with poison. Then injected all the holes.

Oh boy. By this point I decided to call Terry, the mean Craigslist lady ( you'll find out later why she's so mean) and I warned her, like any human would, that she has LIVE termites in her rental house where she's trying to sell all of her mother's furniture. And that she should not sell any more, unless she tells people about it. And she said how she didn't know and that she was sure I could fix the furniture.

 

Than I decided to tackle the chair. And that was the stuff of nightmares. It WAS so pretty. Until I got a hold of it. I saw tears in the fabric. I decided to pull it up. And it pulled up way too easy for comfort.

 

Oh and I chipped away the legs only to find that they had been hollowed out. 

Hey! Guess what? Termites can eat fabric. Let me rephrase that. HOLY CRAP! This is the stuff nightmares are made of. When I pulled up the fabric, live, squirming, gooey, disgusting, maggot looking, termites tumbled out of the cotton.
 

 

They even had a little hangout full of termite poop ball-ies.

I gave up on the dresser when I dug so much that the side collapsed and I kicked it over. The vanity. I had to save SOMETHING. This had no signs of termite funkies...until I saw the back leg had some holes.

But I could patch that up, give it a cute paint job and sell it in no time flat right? Wrong. I couldn't. I went to bed after an exhausting day and hours of research on how to get rid of termites and decided that I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I sold someone a piece of furniture that I wasn't 100% sure was termite free.

So I called Terry back, crying and told her that I couldn't do anything with the furniture and that I had to throw it all away. She danced around the issue. Told me she had to go. I wanted her to see it. See how bad it really was. So I said that my curb isn't big enough for all this stuff. And asked if I could put it on the empty lot across from her house to await trash pickup. She said no, that I couldn't do that, but if I wanted to bring it back to her house and help her put it back in the house that she wanted it back. I asked if I could have at least some of my money back. "We'll see if we can work something out." Then she told me she had to go and asked if I could wait a few days, she's too busy for all this nonsense.

Uh-huh. She was getting her furniture back on my time. So we drove it back to her home. She wasn't there. But her neighbor was. And she said that all of her stuff was eat up with termites, and that her old house on that lot had to be demolished. Needless to say I was furious and threw the termite food in front of her gate. Well, she never returned any of my calls after that.

It's been some time now, but it still hurts, to get screwed over so royally by someone who seemed so sweet. So, be careful on Craigslist! I like to think the best in people, but there are some Terrys in the world and all you can do is cross your fingers that Karma kicks her in her slack wearing old butt!