Okay, it's late, and time is short. Here's the latest amusement:

Attic Ladder Replacement

A multi-step plan.

(It is best if you continue with the help of a good friend, particularly one such as Brian, who has no apparent fear of heights and doesn't mind if you get blue chalk over his pants.)

First, you must remove the previous attic ladder. The easiest way to do this is . . . who are we kidding here. There's no easy way to do this. The least difficult (by which we mean the likelihood of mortal wounds is slightly decreased) is to have a your friend climb into the attic and start carefully removing nails via hammer and chisel, while you attempt to support the weight of the ladder so that it doesn't crash down onto you. You will undoubtedly find that the previous installers had somehow managed to put nails in the most unlikely places, such as behind the ladder springs, and that the final nail will be almost impossible to remove because it's supporting most of the weight of the ladder. You will also note that much of the pretty moulding around the ladder opening will start to fall off under the weight of the ladder.

After the ladder crashes down on you, get your friend out of the attic (you do have an 8-foot step ladder, right? You don't? What the hell is the matter with you? Now your friend is trapped in the attic like a hunchback. Good job, idiot) to help you discard it and mend any injured limbs and contusions. Note that if you are not particularly careful when moving the ladder assembly, the lowest foot-rungs will take any opportunity to fold out and mash you in the jubblies. (Mine are aching considerably as a result.)

While the opening is unblocked by any ladder mechanism, now would be the time to place large objects in the attic, preferably ones you never intend to get back down. Brian and I took the opportunity to remove the particle board flooring installed by some previous occupant, and put three large sheets of 8x4 plywood in the attic to be secured with nails at some later date. In the process of doing this, you will undoubtedly, as we did, get blue chalk (they put it on the edges of the plywood, for some reason) all over your hands and clothes, as well as the walls of your house. Your wife will be thrilled, but not as much as when she notices you also got blue chalk all over the carpeting.

Next, drink a few beers, 'cause the hard part is just coming.

Now is the time to get out the new attic ladder (assuming you bought one; I'm not making any assumptions about the intelligence of my readership, not after the "dude u should totaly rite about that time i peed in a cup and poured it on jimmy remember that omigd i twas awesum" email I got yesterday) and prepare it for installation. If you got a good one, it will come with these handy straps that you use to hold it in place semi-securely while you nail it in. Nail those on as directed. After you're done, realize that you put them on upside down, carefully remove them, and nail them back on properly.

Next, have your friend climb up into the attic again and hand the ladder up to him. This is nearly impossible to do unless you have biceps such that you can personally curl a half-height Whirlpool freezer, but do the best you can. When you do this, you will realize that the ladder is approximately 25" wide, and the hole is only about 23" wide. Worry frantically that you bought the wrong ladder, but then realize that no, the previous installers bought the wrong ladder, and compensated for this by nailing in a bunch of extra pieces of 1" wood on each side. Carefully remove those pieces of wood. Note: the sound of nails being ripped from wood is louder than you think. I'd recommend you wear ear protection, but I'm not a wuss.

Lift the ladder up to your friend again. As he pulls the ladder into the hole, stand underneath it on the ladder and support it. The easiest way to do this is to simply rest it on your head and stand on the ladder with your arms at your sides. Then alert your friend he should bend the support straps around the joists to hold the ladder in place while you open it. As you do so, the entire apparatus will shift downwards very ominously; this is a signal that you should go back up and hold it in place while your friend nails the support straps to the joists.

Once that's complete, carefully open the ladder partway and clamber up to help align things. Realize once you've done this that you are going to require shims. The ladder-maker will have supplied you with a single piece of plywood, about 6" on a side, that they will refer to as "shims." This is comically useless. While your friend sits in the hot attic, wondering if the sweat stain in the crotch of his pants will ever wash out, run downstairs into the garage, grab a bunch of 1/4" plywood scrap, and run it through your table saw to create shims as needed. (If you lack a table saw, your best bet is to run out into the yard and gnaw the necessary shims out of living tree bark, because apparently you live in the paleolithic era. Welcome to the 21st century, Mr. Urk.) Bring these back upstairs and slide them in place where needed.

Now, support the ladder while your friend nails it in place. (Make sure you have some large, preferably 2-3" nails of good thickness. You know, we probably should have alerted you at the beginning of these instructions that you would need a bunch of tools and fasteners and things. Our bad.) Once or twice, he will probably "accidentally" bash you in the fingers or head with the hammer. If this happens, weep a little, and thank God he didn't catch you in the eye with the claw part.

Next, fold the ladder all the way down to check it for obvious deficiences, and to see how much wood you'll have to cut off the bottom so that it unfolds properly. Don't actually cut the wood off just yet; you can put that off until the weekend. Shake your friend's hand, bid him fond adieu, and go get a beer, and an icepack for your nuts.