[I.Rowboat]

My wife HATES HATES HATES ants. After trying all of the usual remedies (bagging all food in the cabinets and pantry in Ziplocs, making sure the kitchen was spotless after use, putting out Grants' ant stakes, etc.) I eventually decided to just call in Orkin. Problem solved. It took about 12 weeks to completely resolve things, but that was two years ago, and we haven't had an ant flare up since. We also have two small kids, so we made sure they didn't use anything toxic to humans.

Cost was around $800 for the first year, during which they come out often to get things under control, then every other month for maintenance. Second year has just been maintenance, and was a lot less. Not cheap but worth it for us; YMMV.