Seriously.. Pantry moths!!! (part 2)

Got a bitter enemy.???Give them a moth infested gift.  You know a "loose lid" just add eggs cookie mix jar. (Just joking) Trust me when I tell you it is a nightmare.  These things are industrial.


Okay the moth saga was longer than a week.  I kept getting moths.  I had a couple of days that were bug free, I got all excited.  Well, I counted the chickens before the eggs hatched.  These little SOBs are not easy to get rid of.  So I called in the professionals when I had a dozen one morning when I got up.  They came and "bombed" the room sprayed the corners and walls down.  Leaving me this wonderful mess.  I was told to leave the door closed for at least six hours.  Which I actually left overnight.  The next morning I started the battle again.

Lets just say there were tons of dead bugs everywhere.

I am NOT looking forward to cleaning this up. But I am getting ready to complete empty this room again. I am tempted to stack the food outside on the porch for a couple of days while I figure this out.

I will tell you that for the first time and to my horror I had three live moths flying around my kitchen when I got home.  They escaped the pantry and the poison kept them out.  I about lost my mind.

The issue with these damn things is that if you miss ONE larvae you start the cycle all over again.  And the worms are in the strangest places..  Like a tote of cookie cutters.  WHY?? 

They crawl all over the place after they eat to "spin" themselves into cocoons.  So the "mobile" worms are full and moving to their intended cocoon area.  The moths do NOT eat anything.  Their sole purpose is to reproduce.  By the time you see worms they have left the food source and are going to the next stage of the cycle. 

Which makes absolutely no since where they decide to cocoon.

Like the top of the lip of the vinegar bottle.

Flip all the containers over.  Sadly I did this the last time to no avail. 

This time I completely emptied the room.. The next morning I had live MOTHS.  "Are you f*ing kidding me!!"  This is where a crazy person says burn the house down.. OR moves. Well, I don't have either of those options.

 But I found the issue.  This wonderfully worthless dead space.  WHAT THE F*CK.  Some man did this you just know it...  Women don't waste any space in a pantry.  Pantry shelve space is premium.

You can't really see the issue but this is LOADED with hundreds of live larvae, moths, and  the cocoon stage... 

And they are ALIVE, even after the pros sprayed.  They can bomb the room with a product that kills even the eggs.  But you can not be in the house for 36 hours.  I am not quite there yet.  But honestly I will do that if this doesn't work.

But I did do a TON of research on these damn things and saw a post late last night about a woman's grandfather use to pour boiling hot water on the cellar shelves.  So Me being ME, I got scalding hot water from the tab and started dumping cups down the corners.  Well, that made me worry about mold -we live in Houston.  AND it wasn't appearing to do anything.  So I boiled a gallon of water.  I mean a rolling boil, I added 1/4 cup of bleach to it and climbed back up my ladder.

There were TONS of bugs.  The white stuff is Sheetrock dust.  Which the larvae will eat as well.

I dumped one cup at a time down the corners, and along the wall.  I looked down the hole and I was so shocked that I did the gig on the top of the ladder.  The boiling water melts the silk, it knocks them down and kills them at the same time.  It TOTALLY works... I dumped a couple more cups then I cleaned up that mess.

I bleached the shelves and even if I didn't want to, it was time to put the stuff back.  I have been wanting to rearrange things.  But I have never gotten around it.  Again, I have no idea where the first moths came from, because I keep everything in plastic.  I went and got more jars for ALL my pasta now.  I would love to say that this did it.  But at the moment I do not know.  I have killed a good six moths in there since I put all the stuff back.  I also put out moth tape and I have a good ten in that.  But I am told they could have been flying around the house and waiting for me to leave the room alone.  I am hoping that this time works.  

Happy Bug killing.

(From the moment I saw the first moth until it was a full on infestation was maybe two weeks.  The moment I started the battle until I was moth free was maybe a good two months, but was honestly only a couple of weeks after I found the corner problem.  It took the pros three "bombs" or sprays and the moths were finally gone.   They came and sprayed the room once a week for a month. I am now a month moth free.  Which I am told means they are gone.  But I won't lie, I still look around the ceiling and shelves every time I go in there.)

Front door

My front doors faces the west.  Not quite dead straight on but almost.  With the lake house every summer for the last few years.  Then selling and moving out of that vacation property the door got ignored.  That and how often do you go in and out of that door.  I never do, I park in the garage.  

Well the door was sad, sad sad.  The bottom didn't have any finish left at all.  I am not a "pro" so I didn't risk ruining the knobs, I just removed them.  I taped the holes every night for the four days it took me to finish the doors.  Yeah I know "real" home security at its best.

This is after the first layer of stripper.  I could not find the color changing stuff.  It was so hot that it wanted to dry out before it was actually ready to be scraped off.  This took more than double the time it should have.  I would say wait until spring or fall, on a cool day.

This is after three strippings and a ton of sanding.

I knew two things, I was never getting this totally smooth and that I needed to stain this very dark to cover the old stain.

Because of the weather issues I decided on a Spar Urethane, which I had never used before.  Things I learned.  Not anything like Poly.... Way thicker, stinks like nobodies business, and the dry time is HOURS.  You have to be careful it will sag and run if you get it too thick.  You MUST sand between each and every layer -this stuff raises the grain from layer one to layer four.  You MUST use at least three coats to get rid of the splotchy gloss look.

This is after four coats.  I am finished even though it is not perfect nor is this my best work.  But It is getting too hot in the Texas "spring" to do anything else to it.  I may lightly sand it this fall and add a fifth coat to get it more even.  But it is a TON better than it was.   I would never put solid wood doors on a home.  I never have in any of the houses I have built.    The next time this needs stripped I will paint it.

Happy Stripping.

Pantry Moths...

***Pantry Moths***

Who Knew

So I lived in Texas for the last eight years.  The bugs are VERY different than the Kansas bugs, wood roaches that are three inches long and scare the living h*ll out of you.  But I never in all my life heard of pantry moths.  So I saw a moth in my pantry and thought absolutely nothing of it.  A couple of days later I say several -six to ten.  I killed them and went about my day.  Less than a week later there were over twenty visual moths.  I did not have time to deal with them.  So I planned to get to the bottom of it the next day.  I embarked on the WORST infestation I have ever dealt with.

I have had weevils, so I keep everything in plastic.

Moths. This does not do the situation justice.  There were a good hundred.

I went and got OFF flying bug killer and sprayed the p* out of them.  That was JUST the first step in an all day cleaning embankment.

Here is the larvae that I had to scrape from the surface, they stick to the surface and are not able to be just vacuumed off.   I have five shelves they were along all the corners, top and underneath side.  There were hundreds of them.

So I threw away anything that was in a box that I was not sure of, crackers, cake mix, ect.  But that was not the "nest" which I didn't know at the time.  All the research stated that they are drawn to grain items.  Which is a problem in my pantry.  I store everything in PLASTIC.

I mean everything.

Pasta, rice, chocolate, all sugars, to beans and dog food.  We buy in bulk so I am all about plastic storage.  So I was at a loss.  I cleaned and got all the bugs.

But day two I got up to four moths and a handful of the damn worms.  I was furious and confused.  But in my cleaning I had put an open bag of puppy food in a plastic stack container.  You know the kind that are not air tight buy allow you to stack them.  Well the container was full of worms.  BINGO the nest.  I put the bag in a plastic bag,  that in the trash and rolled the trash can from the garage.  All day long I would find a random worm (larvae) or a moth.  But I was sure that I had the only food source.  So I stayed calm.  On day three I had even less random missed worms.  They are tiny and hard to miss.  They are on the bottoms of all the cans, in the creases of the plastic containers.  I mean EVERYWHERE.  But I would get them and stay calm.  Day four was even better just a couple of strays, nothing like day one.  Day five NOTHING...  You have no idea how happy I was.  SO the lesson here is that moths in the pantry are NOTHING to ignore.  And is takes a good week of gathering the strays to completely rid the pantry.

Happy bug killing.