Top Down Approach

The Attic

Being out of town a large portion of this last week meant things got off to a relatively slow start. Jason had a family funeral on Saturday and had other responsibilities on Sunday, so that left me to tackle things on my own. I decided to take a decidedly top-down approach and work on cleaning out the attic. Jason had started by clearing out the basement and I figured if I started in the attic we'd meet half way at some point in the next year or two.

The Basement

 There was WAY less junk left behind in the attic, so I figured that I had perhaps gotten the better deal. Jason definitely had some serious lifting to do due to the ton of moldy damp books piled up in all corners down there along with a 2" layer of ash and dust covering everything.... How bad could the attic actually be????

As you can see, it was a pretty bright and sunny day outside... The first thing that I discovered was that the attic is currently home to an EXTREMELY successful breading program for the common housefly. You can see just a few dozen of them if you look closely at the window to the left.... Those suckers are pretty resilient. I sucked them all up with the shop vac, and an hour later when I opened up the canister to dump it out they all flew right out. Scary!

Flies were just the beginning... I've been telling Jason that one of my long-term dreams for the new house is to have some bees so we can have some fresh honey... I was pretty much figuring on that happening somewhere out in the yard, but apparently the bee's had a different idea... In the gable next to the chimney we found three VERY large honey combs and evidence of honey having dripped out all over the attic floor below. How we missed this on earlier trips up there I'm not sure... Luckily they look as though they've been abandoned for a long time. Not a bee in sight! Nor a raccoon, although there was pleanty of evidence of them too!

The pictures above are of a couple of different nest of the little beasts. Again, nothing looking too fresh, but a MESS to clean up none the less. The nest on the right was filled with sparkly things like Christmas tree ornaments and even a perfectly intact hand painted china tea cup!

It also appears as though  the house may have some significant historical connection to the Underground Railroad... for squirrels. The shot at right is a tunnel that they appear to have chewed through the insulation that runs the entire length of the attic under the floorboards (the lighter boards at the top of the photo). While I'm glad to think that the house may have played a key role the effort, I'm a bit sad to say that it certainly smells like not every beast who attempted to make the trip made it out alive... Hard to tell at the moment, but we'll have to see once the weather warms... Something smells decidedly un-fresh in the general vicinity.