It was 12:02 and I hadn’t even noticed yet. We were vacuuming and organizing the living room after just having finished a draft fitting of a new door and frame for the newly discovered south-side attic gable crawlspace we found several weeks ago while hunting down doorbell and electrical wiring. It also yielded some other interesting finds.
The attic was converted to a loft years ago by some previous owner. The half wall on the north side contains the chimney and the crawlspace for that side of the house with a handy door for access. The south crawl was more akin to a myth or a legend. Assumably by the shape of the house it had to exist somewhere behind the solid southern half wall and yet no one had ever actually seen it in the 23 years of occupancy.
Until now.
While in a search for ancient front and back doorbell wiring that criss-crosses the upper levels of the house we (me, unsupervised) decided to carefully say fuck it and destroy a section of ancient crumbling vinyl pattern sheetrock that’s definitely been discontinued for decades so good luck finding a matching piece, future-me.
Well the joke’s on you past-me. We’re going build an access door instead with less than ideal tools and we’re going to hate it and we’re also going to miss New Year’s and not notice until 12:02. And that’s a full circle folks, just like our orbit around the sun.
Now I’d like to (re)introduce the modern world to Mr. Jerome Barmarsh.
Jerry was a previous tenant at some point and lost several letters, paperwork, photos, receipts and brochures circa 1959 under the floorboards in the southern crawl, which I retrieved along with finding several in the northern crawl as well.
Not to mention the waste stacks, bathroom fan wiring, and strangely a working light socket opposite the one in north.
And yet no door.
Well there’s one now.
Jacob