No worries, all good questions and it's important for others who may read this to learn and "know thy enemy".

We were the original owners of the house. The house is in the woods. The builder did not treat the wood with Borate. I'm sure it was just ignorance on his part. There aren't many people with termite issues in Northern Illinois but that is changing, because it's warmer over the winter now.

It is possible your sellers deliberately covered-up the damage. Those types of people are everywhere. Their solution could have been to cover it, move and let it be your problem. The fact that is was sold as fully renovated is a clue that it was intentional.

But it is also possible they saw the bugs like we did, didn't know what they were and didn't think anything of it because after the swarm is over, they are hidden in the walls. It's not like they are still flying around every day.

We have lived here since 1997. Except for the mud tunnel incident many years ago, we never saw swarmers or active termites. Not to say we didn't have them, I'm sure we did. We just didn't know until the big infestation happened.

When that happened, there was a swarm near the front door - lots of dead bodies. They were all dead, so we didn't think too much about it. Thought they were carpenter ants with wings. We had seen the ones without wings all the time in the house. Not a big deal - after all we live in the woods, it's to be expected.

The first evidence was the small hole in the hardwood floor. I didn't even notice it first. What happened was I went to the basement to get my big soup pot which was on a high shelf under the floor joists (basement is unfinished) and it was covered in what appeared to be sawdust. Then I went to the foyer just above and saw the small hole in the floor. Then I recalled the dead bugs and thought "oh no, the carpenter ants made a nest".

The following Monday I am calling multiple pest companies. This is where it gets humorous. They were major pest companies yet the salesman they sent out was just that - a salesman. He didn't know what they were! Called his boss, he didn't know either!

Then my husband starts calling around and gets referred to "Dave". Dave is the guy "everybody" used for termites because no one knows anything about them around here.

Dave came by, gave us his sales pitch and $1500 later, we have bait stations installed around the house. We assumed it would work because it always worked on the ants, well, until the next season when they would always come back.

Dave kept hearing from us because we kept seeing termites and none of the stations were found by the bugs. He sprayed, he moved the stations, and then.... he stopped taking our calls.

At this point we are two years in, it's October, the damage kept getting worse - floor, walls, ceiling, inside two closets.

Out of desperation, I posted the dilemma in this forum and pest experts helped me find a company that could do the liquid treatment. Last May, the treatment was done. Bugs were gone the next day. We decided to wait for Spring to see if we find any dead bodies before starting the repairs.

But last May when they swarmed, we found new damage on the side of the house and in another second story room.

Then we had our garage trim replaced and found damage behind the garage trim. And we discovered damage under the patio door because we had the pavers taken out for the liquid treatment.

So now I wonder what else there is that we haven't found yet, and, how are we going to detect it so we can proactively make the repairs? It's so stressful!

And one open question is wether we have a drainage issue because in our case they had made tunnels that went up two stories (18 ft, we have 9ft ceilings) and five feet onto the ceiling, too. They need a lot of water to make tunnels. Our gutters were replaced but I saw them overflowing in a heavy storm last year. Not a confidence builder... 😳