Watch out - you might get what you're after...

Last night Tina and I ventured further into the space between places, the floor between the 1st and 2nd, the doorway to a dimension of dust and spiders and bad wiring.
The Attic!

Acutally getting up into the original attic and looking in with a ladder and a flashlight, we don't see a whole lot of anything up there. Still lots of bad wiring but we couldn't see if it was hot because my touchless voltage tester is dead. We need a new one of those.

Tina was able to see the 2nd (missing) chimney as well, although I didn't see it while I was up there. The house originally had two chimneys - it shows this in the pictures we have from 1890. Now the house only has one (not apparently connected to anything!). We wondered for awhile where the 2nd damn chimney was. Now we know.

We also noticed random bits of fluff here and there, and what may have been insect pods. Along one wall of the attic we did see some insulation, but for the most part it's completely uninsulated. We have to fix that, but not before we fix pretty much all of the wiring. The wiring is in such sad shape, I think we're going to have to literally rewire the entire house. Unfortunately I don't know if we will be able to afford to do this before winter, so it may be pretty damn cold in the house this year. As it stands, we plan to get a few baseboard heaters to offset the cold.

The most disturbing thing we found in the old attic was a good deal of fire damage!
Up in the corner of the house - pretty much IN the master bedroom, there are a lot of blackened charred beams and board under the roof. We haven't heard any mention of any fire by the PO, so I'm assuming it's older than that. No way to tell really.
It looks like it burned awhile because the damage is pretty extensive and the wood is more than just soot-blackened. I'm not sure if we'll have to get in there and replace it (maybe when they do the roof?) or if it's been that way for 100 years and would be fine for another 100.
The fire is definitely intriguing to me. There was a fire in Brownsville in 1919 that destroyed a lot of buildings in the downtown area. We're only about 2 blocks away from downtown, so I wonder if our house was damaged by it. We may never find out, and I'm not even sure where to look. The Fire Dept in it's current incarnation has only been around since 1932 and I don't know if they would even have a record of their calls. The neighbor who has been there the longest has been in the same house in Bville for 30 years, so I'll ask him if he knows anything about a fire in the house.
Other than that, I'm completely out of ideas about where and how to find out what happened. Any suggestions are definitely welcome.

The new(er) attic was a little less traumatic, and we actually found some STUFF!
We found a good amount of wood up there, most of it looked like original siding and maybe even flooring. YAY!
There was also some newer crap wood mixed in.

We also found a coffee can that looked like it was from the 20s or 30s. I didn't pull it out and look for a date so I can't be sure.

Above the creepy inside hole/tunnel/alcove thing was a wall. I shined a flashlight into the holes and was sure I saw something back there. I was pretty sure it was a shoe. I sent Tina in to investigate - she's smaller and more flexible than I am. :)
She pulled out a shoe that appears to be from the early 1900s, maybe even 1890s.
It's in pretty bad shape, full of dust and grime and who knows what else because it's been more or less exposed to the elements every time the roof has been neglected for any period of time. There's a big tear along one side. But the inside of the shoe and one side that was covered is in suprisingly good shape! We're almost able to completely make out the name of the cobbler and something else as well. We plan to photograph and post that soon. Also going to research to see if we can pinpoint a date and where it came from.

Also back in the wall was a box of what we believe to be earplugs. The label on the box says they were patented in 1892. That's only 2 years after the house was built, from the info we have so far. Neat! Picture of that is on the way too. The box was empty, in case anyone wondered if they were still good. :)

Finally, we found a piece of broken glass. Tina thinks it's the base to something, but it looks to me to be the top piece of a lamp, probably an oil or gas lamp. The glass is hand made, (you can tell by the imperfections!) and about the size of the top of a modern glass light cover you'd find on a chandelier.
Not terribly exciting, but somewhat neat. I'm still excited to see if we find anything else in the attic once we actually get in there to do the wiring. I'm also wondering if we'll find anything once we remove a wall or two.

The weirdest thing about the finds in the new(er) attic is that the shoe, glass and earplugs were directly above the ceiling of the kitchen. WTF?
We are also still not sure when the addition to the house was added. Even from up in the attic, it's hard to tell. Part of me is beginning to think it was part of the original house, because there's floorboards and siding up there along with that weird hole/tunnel/alcove bit that match what's on the house now.
I think we're going to have to get a contractor in here to tell us shit like that.

Hope this was entertaining. Back to work!

posted by Unknown @ Friday, June 16, 2006