Mountain Home Lady Bug Problem

[Jose Menendez]

Hello!

We purchased a very nice 2/2 home in the Burnsville area of North Carolina back in February. It needed a good amount of work which has been slow to complete but we are nearly done with everything. When we purchased it, we noted a large number of dead lady bugs inside the home, basement, and around the windows. We hired Terminex and put new screens on all windows. The bug problem seemed to go away but now that we’re almost done getting the house ready and listed the lady bugs have come back! I’m guessing it’s the change in weather up there.

Terminex basically said they can’t eliminate them completely. The windows are original (house built in the 80s). Do I need to change them? Any tricks for this issue?

We also have a cigarette smell in one of the bathrooms. We’ve painted several times with Kilz, including the ceiling. We ripped out the flooring/shower/bath and installed all new tile. Got rid of anything wood in there. The smell is 90% gone but still lingers a little. We have a company called Servpro coming out to inspect and help us with that this week.

I feel like I can’t list the property as a vacation rental with these 2 pesky issues! Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

This is our first STR. We previously owned an LTR for several years that we ended up selling. It was a new home and basically had zero problems.