Look! Under the roof!
Posted on Saturday, March 22, 2008
An attic is the one room that just happens. Build a house with an 8-foot ceiling and a 20-foot roof, and there’s got to be something in between: the attic, garret, loft, overhead storage or plain empty space, where the drips and the dust bunnies play.
Hardly ever planned, the room is hardly ever used for much on purpose.
And yet the attic is full of — well, junk, yes — and hot air and spiders — but full of potential. After all, it’s probably the biggest open space in the whole house. No floor ? Details !
Some attics can be made into fresh new rooms. Old houses, especially, tend to have big attics with plenty of head clearance that makes remodeling a possibility.
The current issue of Atlanta magazine shows how to go all-out with a 1920 s cottage. In this case, the conversion turns yesterday’s wasted attic into a new master bedroom and sitting room with built-in bookcases, closet, nursery, and bath with two sinks.
The low-slung suburban ranch house — the American dream home of the 1950 s and ’ 60 s — doesn’t have so much attic space. Some attics are bound to be just what they are.
The attic’s steep roof slants to the sides, and only people shaped like squat triangles could love it up there. Nobody since the builder has set hand or hammer in its far corners. The low attic seems to be good for just one thing: clutter. The mystery is how so much stuff gets to the attic. Who hid Grandma’s scowling picture up there ? Who shoved the box of old hi-fi albums up the ladder ? Confessions are few, but chances are everybody knows something they aren’t telling about the attic. “Our consciences are littered like an old attic,” the ethicist Wilford O. Cross said. And our attics are littered like squirrels. Here are the ins and outs and ups and downs of attics OVER AND ABOVE If the attic is big enough to live in, why not live in it ? The idea is “definitely worth considering,” according to how-to book Converting Garages, Attics & Basements (Sunset, 2001 ), among guides available through the Central Arkansas Library System. Bookstore options on how to tackle an attic conversion include IdeaWise Basements and Attics: Inspiration and Information for the Do-It-Yourselfer (Creative Publishing, 2006 ) Ultimate Guide to Basements, Attics and Garages: Plan, Design, Remodel (Creative Homeowner, 2006 ) Finishing Basements and Attics: Ideas and Projects for Expanding Your Living Space (Creative Publishing, 2000 ) The idea could be nothing more than a cozy nook, a getaway place to sit and read. Humorist James Thurber likened the past to an armchair in the attic, a soft spot to sink in.
But some attics turn into greater designs. The Church in the Attic (Our Lord in the Attic Chapel ) is a Catholic sanctuary and museum built over a canal house in Amsterdam. It remembers old times of religious persecution, when people commonly held church in attics. of religious persecution, when people commonly held church in attics.
The usual idea is to gain some bit of extra space. The finished-out attic is like an addition that’s already there. It could be the perfect location for a desk — right under the skylight.
Attic conversion is a job, though: floors to install, drywall to put up. The joists (floor supports ) and rafters might need reinforcement. And a ladder won’t do if you’re headed up to the attic all the time.
Knees and convenience call for stairs. But where ? Spiral stairs take the least space. But good luck moving that desk-ofyour-dreams up a spiral staircase.
Meantime ? Here’s the ladder.
STEP UP Attic ladders cost $ 100 to $ 300. Some fold, some telescope, some collapse like an accordion. The general arrangement attaches a springpowered ladder to a trapdoor in the ceiling. The door whaps shut like it means business, but its loose fit is apt to let expensive heat escape into the attic in the winter and cold seep from the attic into the house. The answer is a Styrofoam cover or flap over the trapdoor, sometimes called an attic tent. It’s $ 100 to $ 200 worth of insulation, not to be confused with a tent attic, a net for storage in a tent.
I YAM WHAT I CRAM Good thing the typically neglected attic is heaped with junk. It’s hardly the best place to stow good belongings. “Remember that extreme temperatures can build in an attic without proper ventilation, especially with a dark-colored roof,” according to home remodeler Bob Vila’s Web site at www. bobvila. com. In summer, the attic is apt to be hotter than outdoors — 100 degrees, 120, and up, up, to the point where glued things come to pieces.
The same attic might be freezing in January.
The roof might spring a leak.
Science is at work on the heat problem. The Oak Ridge National Laboratory in sweltering Tennessee has come up with a new way to make the sun’s rays bounce off a roof, New Scientist magazine reports. The breakthrough component is a goo that soaks up energy during the day and poofs it back into the air at night.
Roof-mounted attic fans are the less science fiction-like way to pull hot air out of the attic. The result is a cooler house, manufacturers say. Automatic fans keep upstairs rooms 10 percent cooler and save up to 30 percent on the cost of air conditioning, according to the Jet Fan company’s Web site at www. atticfans. com.
The newest fans promise whisper-quiet operation, besides. But some homeowners might wish for a clatter and bang to scare off the squirrels.
TARZAN’S ATTIC Since people don’t take to their attics a whole lot, a variety of wildlife moves in. Squirrels, bats, sparrows, mice and rats are among the likely visitors, according to a manual on “vertebrate pests” from the University of Arkansas Cooperative Extension Service. Pests and perils come without backbones, too. The venomous brown recluse spider is a possibility among the lurkers — and mold, especially as the consequence of a leaky roof. How do creepy things creep in ? They don’t need much of an invitation. The merest crack, hole, saggy seam or loose board can look like a hotel entrance to a homeless roof rat. What to do ? Here are some tips from the manual: For bats (any of Arkansas ’ 16 species ): Turn off the lights, open any windows, let the bat flutter off by itself. Chasing and swatting just “causes undue panic” for everybody, including the bat. For birds: Repellents might work.
For mice and rats: Traps probably will get rid of a few. Poisoned baits deal with more. But “rodent-proof construction is the best defense.” The object is to seal every hole bigger than 1 / 4 inch with things like concrete and sheet metal that can fend off a rodent’s teeth. Just 1 / 4 inch is enough slack for a mouse to squeeze through. Give a rat 1 / 2 inch, he’ll take the attic.
Squirrels not only slip in through attic ventilators, knotholes and openings meant for utility lines, but they can chew their way in. Once in, they gnaw the wiring.
The same tricks that stop rats frustrate squirrels. But wait ! Squirrels have litters twice a year, and now is the tail end of one of those times (the other is June through September ). Sealed in, the babies die. Phew ! And shame, shame !
HIGH EXPECTATIONS The attic can be scary. Bats aren’t the worst. Vampires know their way around an attic — ask Dracula.
Attics can be ratty and cold garrets, where artists starve.
But attics can be havens, too, like the attic that hid Anne Frank.
It can be a happy place up there. The Magic Attic Club is a series of books for girls about the best spot of all to whisper secrets.
The attic just needs a little cleaning — a bit of tidying up — really, a full-out and furious spring de-junking. Now’s the time. Where’s the volunteer ?
“Why do I feel stuck with this ?” The lyric is from the Alien Ant Farm’s album Up in the Attic. But it might as well describe the mood of most people with an attic that needs work.
Here’s the motivation to tear in Home and Garden Television’s Cash in the Attic (like the original British series of the same title on cable TV’s BBC America ) thrills to the chance of uncovering something valuable up there: a great old painting tucked in the back, a forgotten vase worth the price of a new living room set.
Such things do happen. A cache of letters written by Abraham Lincoln’s wife, Mary, recently turned up in a steamer trunk in the attic that once belonged to Lincoln’s attorney, according to American Spectator’s report.
And some guy in England found a space alien in a bottle of vinegar-or-something in his attic, according to, well — many accounts on the Internet.
The attic: It’s what’s up.
Coming next week When a Russellville resident couldn’t find an accessible house that suited her needs, she built one.
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