If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll know that I am away from home for a few weeks. I’ve been incredibly busy but I’m taking a breather this weekend but let me tell you what I had to deal with when I arrived at my accommodation.

On day one, I arrived, I came in to the sound of a smoke detector with a low battery. If you’ve ever heard a chirp every minute and didn’t know where it came from, it’s a low battery. It wasn’t too loud, but it was there and it was chirping a little too regularly for my liking.

I thought to myself well it won’t be so bad. I can handle this.

I couldn’t handle it. I had somewhere to be in about 30 minutes. I had no time to investigate. Hours later, I came back and thought that I’d go grab some 9 volt batteries because there were 2 smoke detectors: one in the hall and one in the living room and the one in the hall was chirping too. (May I add that this was right next to my bedroom door…)

The next day, after an hour, I said I couldn’t handle it anymore. I went out to the store to buy the batteries. I came back. I replaced the batteries in the two smoke detectors. Then I heard it again:

CHIRP!!!

Okay. I just replaced the battery. What the hell? I searched the whole house for smoke detectors and I couldn’t find any more of them. Again, CHIRP!!!!

The noise was coming from near my bedroom. There was a cabinet up near the ceiling where I thought the noise was coming from. It was then that I realised that the sound was coming in that general area. The cabinet was empty.

I think then I started going crazy because I could hear it, but couldn’t find an alarm anywhere. I then sent an email to the accommodation owners and simply said that the noise is driving me crazy and keeping me awake at night and I am not dealing with that for 3 weeks.

They sent a contractor who came by to check it out and then he realised what had happened. About a year ago, they did some renovating and covered up some kitchen cabinets and must have left a smoke detector in there. He asked how long I’d be there and I told him that it needed to be fixed. They tried to get it through the attic. Couldn’t do that. They ended up drilling a hole in the wall instead.

Anyway, it was fixed the day that I sent the email. Within hours actually. I am so thankful that it’s gone now.

But… how do you leave stuff on a shelf and cover it up with a wall?