ye olde shanty: home sweet home part 3, aka a circus massacre.

for those of you not following me on instagram for up-to-the-minute, groundbreaking shanty updates (#yeoldeshanty), the exterior demo is mostly done and the termite tents went up immediately following. i've been talking about the termite tents since the beginning, and have actually been really excited about it. imagine my excitement when i found out the tents looked like THIS:

the tents were so festive and cheerful in the midst of this shit show that i was actually a little bit sad to see them come down after just 24 hours.

coastal fumigators, as i understand it, is the only company that offers the tent fumigation service in the greater space city area, and denny, the foreman, said they put up about three tents a day, every day. they take them off a house and then put them right back on another house. which explains how they are SO FAST. but seriously, houston is enormous. how is there only one company doing this?

you could pretty much see the tents from any surrounding street, and it cracked me up. such festive tents, filled with poisonous gasses, and possibly also some meth cookers, à la breaking bad. (PS-BREAKING BAD IS BACK Y'ALL. me gusta that aaron paul nugget, hard, but has hims been sucking on an air hose or is hims just a bit puffy OR WHAT; discuss)

the tents were necessary in order to kill the subterranean termite infestation, and as a bonus, they killed pretty much everything else, including the other type of termites we had (drywood), the carpenter bee colony we discovered post-purchase, tons of scary wasps, roaches et al. also there were some lizard casualties; sorry, lizards. i'm happy to report zero cat deaths, though, including the stray effer mercer had been feeding on the porch of the back shanty. we considered the cat thing a real victory. 

speaking of, the DEADLY GASSES part of this process was pretty serious. we'd handed letters out prior, warning our neighbors to hide they kids, hide they wives, and also locate they outdoor cats, since outdoor cats apparently LOVE circus tents and have a death wish. the tent crew put signs everywhere also, had locks on every door AND had a 24-hour watchman sit in front of the house the entire time the tents were up. as none of this was thoroughly covered on B. Bad, we were le surprised. 

brad also had some signs made, because SAFETY FIRST, people. let's hear it for this five-font combo, y'all! i will mention that the coastal fumigators Owner and President (Sherri) called personally to ask where we'd gotten these beauties, because SHE WANT for future gassings. 

when the tents came down, there were dead bugs everywhere. everywhere but mainly right at the perimeter inside the tents, in an effort to escape. 

well played, coastal fumigators. 

imma not post pictures of the bug body pile massacre, because GROSS, but it was remarkable. our paint crew arrived the day after the tents were off, and while the gas level safety tests were being run, they walked around in awe of los insectos muertos. 

in the meantime, i learned a lot about bugs from denny, specifically that carpenter bees look a whole lot like bumblebees, except they have shiny behinds and drill perfectly round 3/8" holes all over the wood of your house, pretty much ruining it in a very lovely way. 

while the tents were up, we had a day to kind of catch our breath, so brad and i checked out a new thai place on westheimer for lunch, which was pretty good, but also very romantic:

MORE SOON, HOES!!!