Ants Must Die

By Saturday the ant problem had gotten out of hand. Even with everything cleaned, the floor coated with whatever nasty substance comes on Swiffer pads, and the sink devoid of dishes, there were still ants wandering about. Eventually they would find the trash can in the living room and all the tasty stuff in the pantry, so J decided to go after them. He went first to the hardware store for boric acid, and the clerks were amazed. "You have ants?? In the winter?" Oh yes we do. So J came back and pried off the molding, and discovered that the vent there is held up with duct tape underneath the floor (it's in the crawlspace that no one can crawl into, because of how the pipes were put in afterwards), and that the previous owner had ..painted over wallpaper. That part of the kitchen is all vinyl wallpaper under the paint, which explains why the paint looked odd in places. So that will all have to come off. J said it might be easier to just pull off the wallboard and at the same time remove some of the weird wiring underneath (there is a in-house communication system and a buzzer and a bunch of land lines there). Since he still needs to buy a table saw to cut the underlayment for the living room flooring, I wasn't ready to dig into walls yet. So we put the boric acid down in the hole and replaced the molding. This morning so far there are no ants.

Some pictures left over from yesterday; Bird looking a little sullen after being pulled apart:

Progress on the corset:

The gray cat had cold feet from being out in the slush:

The neighbor's pool definitely has a leak (and I have a basement window right under where I was standing for the photo.)

Luckily it looks like a slow leak, but as it is 48 degrees F outside right now, I need to go check the water progress later this afternoon.