Wednesday, October 04, 2006

 

Toolman

Last night I was working in the attic, running electrical to our new freezer when I realized that I’m a bit on the clumsy side. And it’s only a matter of time before I accidentally kill myself doing work around the house. You see, I was walking on the rafters of the attic and I lost my balance. So what did I do? I stepped down on the “floor” of the attic. Which is simply drywall. Which can’t support a large child, not to mention an overweight adult.

Amazingly, I managed to avoid falling completely through the attic and into the garage. Though I did knock down a nice-sized piece of drywall. (Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time I’ve caused a hole in a ceiling in our house. The other time was a result of a plumbing mishap in our master bathroom. This was considerably less annoying since it was only in the garage. And as I told The Wife, I kinda liked the hole in our living room, so I thought I’d add one in the garage.)

Putting a hole in the ceiling wasn’t as bad as I thought. Fixing it wouldn’t have been too bad (it’s about 2’ x 4’). But then The Wife mentioned something absolutely wonderful. She said that would actually be a good place for our attic stairs. You see, our garage attic (because we have another one over the bedrooms) is not easily accessible. Basically, you have to climb a ladder and get through a 2’ x 2’ hole. Of course, we don’t have a ladder that’s high enough. So I have to climb to the top of our ladder and hoist myself up into the attic. It’s really not a problem for me. But for the pregnant wife? It’s not too practical. And if you want to put things in or take things out of the attic? Not very practical either.

This might explain why our attic hadn’t been touched in YEARS. When I went through it, I found sleds that were at least 20 years old. Same with some ice skates. I found some sweet-ass 70’s clothes. Some chain link fencing. A box of personal items that included a note from the State of Michigan sending its condolences to some guy because his wife died. Now, the previous owner said they lived there for over 20 years. And I didn’t recognize the name in the letter. So I’m guessing it was BEFORE the previous owner. Yeah, there was basically just a bunch of old junk up there.

Anyway, since our attic wasn’t readily accessible, we were going to add some retractable attic stairs. You might remember them being used in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. Clark pulls down the attic stairs to hide the presents and gets locked up there. Well, that’s what we’re adding. And wouldn’t you know it? The hole that I put in our attic is almost PERFECT for those stairs. So it looks like my clumsiness actually solved another problem of ours. I love it when that happens.

Comments:
Consider yourself lucky. I had a friend who fell through the drywall in his attic floor. Fortunately, he didn't fall all the way to the ground. Unfortunately, his ribs hit the support beams and left him suspended 4 feet above the ground, and, oh yeah, with broken ribs.

So, my buddy's legs are dangling in the middle of his living room, as he tries to breathe with broken ribs, and his wife had his newborn baby out of the house. He hung there for a couple of hours until she got home, when she somehow helped him get down.

I just love the image of his wife walking into the house and seeing a pair of legs dangling from the ceiling of their living room.
 
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