Termite Damage: What It Looks Like and What It Costs to Ignore

Termite damage rarely announces itself. Florida homeowners usually discover it during a remodel, a home sale, or when a door stops closing because the frame has been eaten into lace. By then the colony has often been feeding for years.

What Termite Damage Actually Looks Like

Drywood termites hollow wood from the inside and leave the paint skin intact, so early damage shows as blistered or bubbled paint, tiny pinholes, and piles of frass (droppings) below kick-out holes. Wood may sound papery or hollow when tapped. Subterranean termites add mud tubes on foundations and can destroy floor joists and subflooring, which shows up as spongy floors and sagging doorways.

How Fast Does It Get Expensive?

A single drywood colony eats slowly, but homes seldom host just one. The jump in cost is not the treatment, it is the repair: trim and window frames are carpentry money; eaten roof trusses, floor systems and load-bearing studs are contractor money, permits and engineering. Catching an infestation at the frass stage keeps the story in the hundreds-to-low-thousands. Catching it at the sagging-floor stage is a different conversation.

Damage vs. Active Infestation

Old damage with no live insects needs repair, not treatment. Live activity needs treatment first, then repair. This is why an honest inspection matters before anyone sells you anything: we identify whether insects are present, which species, and how far the visible damage extends.

What To Do If You Find Damage

Do not patch or paint over the evidence before an inspection; fresh frass piles and live insects are the clues that scope the job. Take photos, note the rooms involved, and book an inspection. If the activity is widespread, tent fumigation stops it everywhere at once, and then repairs happen once, on a clean house.