This is actually an account of something that happened August 19th or 20th but it was actually added on June 11, 2007. Somehow we neglected to blog about this nearly monumental occasion that we have discussed with many friends and joke about nearly every time we go up into this attic. I think that we started to write about it and wanted to include it with all the day’s events but somehow we forgot about finishing that post and it was months later when we finally realized. I’m only noticing it’s not there now because I wanted to link back to it…so I guess there’s some benefit for not being lazy when writing about stuff you’ve mentioned before.

At any rate, here is the tale…

We had just experienced our first major cleanup day and all our helpers had gone home already. Since it was Sunday morning and we’re supposed to be quiet on Sundays (don’t want to anger the neighbors before you even move in) we decided to start our day with some exploration. We’d already been exploring with the dog on our walk and liked the results. Why not continue? Plus we were pretty worn out from the day before. Filling a trash container in a matter of hours is no small feat, even with 5 people working at it.

At this point we hadn’t explored the attic at all. Stefan had gone up there a few times to look with the realtor and I’d been up there once or twice but on a warm day you don’t want to be up there at all. It becomes a sauna. What I knew was that there was a bunch of old furniture and other random things up there and I wanted to check it all out a bit more.

Since there was only one working light, we couldn’t see much of anything anyway. There are no windows at all. But we’d found more light fixtures and I had thankfully I had taken new bulbs with us.

We had the dog tied up in the courtyard so that we could leave the attic door open. This helped to give us a little more light and also gave us a tiny breeze. But the wind caught the door after we’d been up there a few minutes and slammed it shut. Naturally there is no handle on the inside of the door, no key and no way that we could figure to get the door open.

But we didn’t start to panic…there was no need. If we hadn’t been up there exploring we wouldn’t have known any better, though. When we replaced one of the light bulbs (our previous owner placed the lights very well across this attic by the way) we noticed that there is a hole in the barn wall which is connected to the attic. We kinda thought it was strange when we first noticed it. But we were extremely thankful later that it was there.

There is a brick wall enclosing the pig stalls and a wooden ceiling above it. On top of this room rest a bunch of old mattresses and doors and parts of a ping pong table (we think). This is where the hole in the attic leads to. So we finished exploring the attic and then climbed through the hole into the barn. Luckily we had a ladder propped up against the wall which connects into the main part of the barn. From the roof of the pig stall we climbed down onto the ladder and onto the floor of the barn. The barn door opens from the inside so we were free.

Thankfully the situation ended without any mishaps but it certainly could have been worse. We more or less laugh about it now…but if we hadn’t seen that hole before, we definitely would have been writing this post with a very different tune.