We were busy repairing the room's bathroom, and we lowered a plumber through the floor and down the side of the wall by rope. As he approached midway, he yelled excitedly, “There is a window here and I think there is a room. Get me a flashlight." After receiving a flashlight, he yelled, "Yes, it is a room, a long narrow room, but there are no boritis (mangrove pole supports) in the ceiling. I turned and looked at my two employees, frozen-faced, all three of us recognizing that we were standing on air and hitting it with a sledgehammer. Three men literally flew through the narrow doorway at the same time.

We ran downstairs and knocked on a partition wall and discovered, at what is now the foot of the bed, a hollow spot in the wall -- which upon excavation, turned out, to have formerly been a very small door. We knocked through and discovered a pile of rubble three feet high from the partially collapsed ceiling and external wall.

Once we'd re-excavated this doorway, and were sure we'd installed enough mangrove poles to shore up the ceiling, we began to sift through the rubble, hoping we would come across Tutankamen’s tomb. But alas, there were no sarcophagii or pirates treasures among the rubble. The next door neighbours apparently knew there had been goodies stashed here early the revolution and had excavated from the opposite side.

This room, as the bedroom of the paterfamilias, contained a large safe which contained a few of the portraits now seen hanging scattered throughout the house.