Paving the Attic

If you will recall, we started working on the attic last fall -- I wrote only one post about working on the wiring up there, and how icky the work was. We didn't actually work that long on it -- a couple of weeks at the outside, and work stopped due to the busyness of Christmas season, cold weather and a general slow down of all household projects.

However, about six or seven weeks ago, HomoDomi got his groove back and started up again, and he has been diligently working on the attic for a couple of hours every day. You can read the old post for a full description of what we wanted to accomplish, but the general reminder is 1) clean up and straighten out the wiring (all to the second floor), which was in preposterous shape; 2) improve insulation; 3) prepare space for storage.

He's gone far beyond that. It goes without saying (but not without credit) that he has brought all the wiring completely up to code. Icky, icky work, all in the dark, on his knees, with little LED flashlights on his head. Most of the wire comes up the hole formerly filled by the chimney, up the middle of the house. Now, it spreads out in a covered 16"-wide channel from the front to back of the house, all wiring accessible at need, but impossible to trip over.

Then he "paved" the floor, as I call it. Using 19/32" plywood boards (IIRC) recycled from the deck of our neighbor's pool (dismantled last fall after standing in place for 50 years -- the decking had been replaced recently by HomoDomi, actually), he started flooring the attic. It covers a thick layer of insulation, and serves as additional insulation. We've had to buy more wood to cover the whole attic floor, but the deck helped a lot.

One might question the necessity of having an entirely floored attic where the ridgepole is only 5 feet high, and the entrance, requiring a climb up a ladder, is a 20" by 24" hole -- which severely limits the size of boxes and furniture. (The size of the hole will be changing -- see future posts). However, one cannot deny the beauty of the space. They are all securely screwed down, too, so a child could run from one end of the attic to the other and not worry about stubbing her toe.

Covering the floor not only makes it easier to walk around (otherwise, the floor of the attic is lathe and plaster that wouldn't hold the weight of an adult woman, and possibly even a child), but it covers the insulation. It's no longer horrifically dusty up there. HomoDomi has vacuumed, and intends to paint, as well, to make the floor whiter and add more light by reflection.

Light. What is an attic without lights? Aside from channeling all the wiring that was there already, HomoDomi has added strings of rope lights (much cheaper than individual bulbs, and kind of festive) on a switch. At one end of the attic he's installed an electrically powered smoke detector, too -- the attic gets to 75 degrees on a sunny day in spring, when the outside air is about 60, so it will be very hot in summer. (If you recall, we had a solar-powered fan installed last fall, which will help. Even with the fan, it gets hot.)

So, we have gone from a dark, dusty space of joists positioned every 22" over lathe-and-plaster "flooring", full of thick motes of insulation, with active electrical wires draped every which way above and below the insulation ... to an open, floored, non-dusty, lighted, smoke-alarmed storage space. Quite a nice improvement.

Credit. HomoDomi has done all this. I have merely handed boards up to him through the hole, and listened. I haven't even gone up there, except to stick my head above the floor to see what there is to see.