Karla Touet is on the verge of tears when she looks at her house.
This time, not because she fears an ant infestation and water damage could bankrupt her.
Instead, she’s stunned that 60 strangers volunteered their time to save her home.
Since August, volunteers have completed about $100,000 worth of work on the house, including removing asbestos and rotten exterior plywood, damaged framing and wet and moldy insulation. The tens of thousands of carpenter ants she found hidden in the walls this summer are gone.
Touet, 33, grew up in the foster system. Now that the repairs are completed, she has a permanent home for the first time in her life.
‘A total loss for words’
“Planting those roots, this was really the first time,” she said. “So the idea of losing my home was terrifying.
“I’m just at a total loss for words. The community stepped up in the biggest way. To find it all culminate to this … I can’t believe this is my house.”
Touet said she received an outpouring of support after CBC originally told her story in August.
Despite taking every precaution in buying her first home, she found herself with a home buyer’s worst nightmare.
Built in 1976, the three-bedroom house across from a school in Mill Woods passed inspection and was sold to her as a good investment. But when Touet removed some baseboards in the living room this summer, she spotted carpenter ants.
She soon uncovered a massive infestation in the walls, and signs of extensive water damage she thinks resulted from decades of leaking water.
Despite passing inspection less than two years ago, Karla Touet said her home had decades-worth of water damage and was infested with carpenter ants. (CBC/David Bajer)
The cost she was quoted for repairs just to make her house liveable for winter was around $100,000. Insurance would not cover the cost because it was deemed a pre-existing problem, and she couldn’t get a home improvement loan.
Experts said Touet did everything she was supposed to do before buying a home. Despite that, lawyers told her one of her few options was to foreclose and file for bankruptcy. She launched a GoFundMe page as a last-ditch effort to raise money to make her house liveable for winter.
Touet owns a painting business, and after other tradespeople heard her story they began offering help.
The Edmonton Carpenter’s Local Union completed new framing and sheeting on the house. This month, a team of 11 volunteers from the Siding Contractors Association of Alberta spent a day transforming the house and garage with new grey vinyl siding and eavestroughing.
The association felt compelled to help Touet, a homeowner who got the “short straw” despite all of her precautions, said executive director Sylvia Hillman.
‘She did everything right’
“She did everything right,” Hillman said. “She did all the things she was supposed to do before she bought the house, by having the inspection and doing all that kind of thing. And she still didn’t get what she expected to get.
“We hope that it’s helped her … feel a little bit more confident in living there and enjoying that major purchase that she’s made.”
Crews removed enough rotten materials to fill three dumpsters, Touet said. She has not yet had to pay anything out of pocket to repair the house.
The interior of the house still needs work: water damaged flooring has to be replaced, bare drywall needs mudding, priming and painting, and lights need to be installed on the outside of the house.
Touet plans to do that work herself, and is already thinking about ways to repay those who have helped her.
“I am so overwhelmed,” she said. “I don’t know how to express enough gratitude for all of this help, because it really took a lot of people coming together at the right times.
“This has really restored my faith in humanity.”
The wall of Touet’s living room, where she first discovered the colony of ants. (Supplied/Karla Touet)