House of Mystery...

So last night after I finished the weedwhacking and Tina finished taping off the trim in the kitchen, we decided to get the step stool and flashlight and do a little poking around in the still unseen and spooky parts of the house - the attic(s). Yes, there are two. Sort of. There's an original attic that is over the upstairs stairwell and there is another attic/big empty space over one of the add-ons. As far as we can tell, they are not in any way connected. We have yet to determine who added the add-on or when. The outside of the add-on was done using the original siding for the house, so it's harder to date. Long story. More on that later.

I'm afraid of heights, so attics aren't real high on my list of fun places. We also have a spoooooky attic. You can prop up the door (ok, well the board that keeps the insulation and critters from overflowing into the house) and peek in, and all you see is spiderwebs, old wood and dark.
I grabbed a mini-maglite (Biggest flashlight in the house at the moment) and poked my head in up there.

The first thing you see with light is a maze of wiring. Some is new, but most is the old knob and tube stuff. There was a good amount of exposed wiring, which I hope is not hot, but the weird thing is that not only is there a single hanging bulb with a pull string switch - there's also 2 more modern inside type light switches. I have no idea what these switches are supposed to be controlling, nor do I know why they would put them in the attic.


Looking around, we also see a good amount of wood. Some of it looks like original tongue & groove flooring! I'm hoping there's enough there to fix some of the other areas of the house where it's either missing or damaged.
There's also some newer 2X4s and a bunch of other misc scraps... I guess this was as good a place to store it as any?
We're going to have to get up there and get an inventory and see what we can come across.

Finally, the weirdest part. If you look toward the main part of the house, you can see that this portion has been added on. The original outside wall is still visible, complete with attached siding. You can see where they cut through it and attached the add-on. Even weirder, there's what appears to be a tunnel or a box of some sort hiding back there, and it appears to be finished complete with ceiling and floor boards. This isn't a room, because it's maybe 3 feet high.

It also doesn't look like new construction and it doesn't look like something that would have been there when the house was in it's whole, unaltered form.

I have no idea what this is or why it's there, nor do I know why there's a 3-4 foot gap between the downstairs ceiling and the upstairs floor. And check out that spiffy knob and tube wiring!!

More pics of creepy attic stuff here: Tina's photo album

For now, the attic has to wait so unless someone knows why this shit is the way it is, you'll get no answers out of me!

-Mike

posted by Unknown @ Tuesday, June 13, 2006