Pay It Forward gift and the termite repairs begin...

Another Pay It Forward gift was sent recently to Gemma who kindly posted about it here.
Gemma told me that her favourite colour was seafoam green and that she loved the scent of roses so I combined the two into this small painting.

Acrylics on 6"x6" gallery wrapped canvas

© Serena Lewis

This was the whole package

I'm so glad that Gemma loved her gift.

I have just one more official Pay It Forward gift to do and one more that is unofficial.
Thank goodness there were no time limits with the Pay It Forward challenge as life has sure thrown a few curve balls since March and it's still ongoing.

One of those curve balls was the second infestation of termites!
They sure are hungry little buggers!
I discovered the nests in two different areas of the house.....the dining room and the corner wall near the front entrance.

Those little black specks on the floor you see in the pic above are actually large black ants which apparently LOVE cleaning up termite nests.  Thankfully they do because, if it wasn't for me noticing THEIR activity, we would never have discovered the huge termite nest sitting inside the wall near the front entrance.  It makes me wonder if there are any more nests like this in the house that are yet undiscovered.

Anywhoo, we had a four month treatment of bait boxes stuck to selected walls which was followed up with a full-on chemical treatment.  That entailed small holes being drilled, approx. 2 metres apart, just above the skirting boards throughout the whole house and the Termidor solution sprayed into the wall cavities.  Last week, the repairs started.  Something that needs to be done, of course, but a major intrusion on our normal day-to-day living.  I had to move A LOT of our furniture into the centre of the rooms so the workman could move about easily and access the walls.....talk about upheaval!  It was very difficult for Brad too as, being legally blind, he needed me to guide him through certain areas.

The pic below is the corner wall where one side faces into our dining area and the other side faces towards the lounge and family/my studio areas of the house.  You can still see a small part of the nest waiting to be cleaned away.

 The chewed up studs were replaced with treated pine

This (below) is the corner wall near the front entrance after stud replacement.

Bob, the repairman, did get the walls to the point of having the sheeting in place and the first coat of plaster applied. Tomorrow (Thursday), he comes back to apply another coat of plaster and then the fun part begins......SANDING!

I am SOOOOOOO NOT looking forward to the sanding part....can you imagine the fine dust everywhere???!!!

The saving grace is that Bob, the repairman, is such a sweet, old man.  I think he does these jobs for the termite mob to supplement his aged pension.  I had Brad play Golden Oldies music on the days Bob was here and we could hear his appreciation as he sang along while he worked.  A few times, I think we were all singing along together.  Bob's sweet and considerate attitude helped to ease the inconvenience of the actual repair-work but I'm not quite so sure if it will be enough when the sanding starts...lol

Stay tuned as I'll be posting again soon on how I've progressed with Michelle's wedding tie box.

~ Love, light and peace ~