Our electrician fell through our ceiling. How was your day?

I don’t have a picture of the gaping hole in my ceiling. I’m certain I was in shock when it happened. But here’s the patch from the six-foot-five human who plummeted through.

I don’t even know how to write this.

If it was a snarky email to a bestie, the above would be my subject line and the body copy would say, see subject.

I mean, that’s it in a nutshell. One minute our electrician, who was about six-five or more, was in the attic doing finishing the of the wiring. The next, he was on the bed, flat on his back surrounded by clumps of cotton-candy insulation.

<end scene>

Perhaps I should have warned him. See, ever since I’ve owned a home, there’s been no such thing as a “simple job” done around the house. I have had quite a bit of work done by professionals, and I swear, with each one there’s always some rando “event” that makes it memorable.

The first was a dead possum in a crawl space. Without so much as a blink, my sweet plumbers grabbed a shovel and removed it, knowing that in a few days the smells coming from the bathroom would surpass anything I could do myself. They didn’t even balk. Just grinned and said, “be sure and tell the boss about our service.”

Done!

Another time the team installing asphalt decided to do donuts while their foreman was at lunch. Sadly, hubs and I were at work, but our neighbor happily recounted the events, including the winning maneuver.

As a bonus, those burnout marks in my driveway did make my Buick Enclave seem pretty badass.

Then there’s the ceiling.

The job was simple enough. *Cough* We were adding recessed lights to multiple rooms. It’s pretty typical for rooms not to have ceiling lights. Especially in the 80s and 90s. Not having them was fine by me. We had ceiling fans where we needed them. Elsewhere there were lamps.

I love lamps. They are perfect for any #mood. Turn on one for ambient lighting, two for a utilitarian effect. Hubs, on the other hand, thinks lamps are akin to the devil, and apparently wanted a 24/7 Vegas affect.

~Whatever.

Through networking, we found an electrician who’d done good, affordable work for friends. (I always factor affordable in when I am getting estimates. Home repairs always add up.) We met with him, and agreed on a price for the eight-room install.

It was a pretty big job and he was hustling all day. By the time he’d reached the final room, I’m sure he was “done.” He had two remaining fixtures left to wire up. Since this was the top-floor guest room the wiring had to be done from the attic. Now, our attic runs the whole length of the house, but only the middle half is walkable. Flanking the center plywood area are joists packed with insulation.

Also… and here’s the tricky part… our attic is FULL of junk. Bags of baby clothes. Old furniture. And pretty much my sister-in-law’s entire apartment left behind when she relocated to Montana. Think antique store with a lot less valuables.

To complete this final leg of the job, our electrician needed to inch around an old stereo cabinet and two boxes of books. Instead of moving the piles, he decided it would be quicker to just squeeze by.

If he’d taken a minute and surveyed the landscape, he would have realized the piles were sitting on the edge of the plywood. But it was late. He was tired. And there was about five more minutes left. #letsdothis

Confessional. It’s not like I haven’t done something similar. But mine netted out to be a tiny, patchable hole. Had I actually fallen through, we probably would have finished the entire attic floor. (Once I got out of traction, of course.) But as it was, we joked at my guffaw and moved on.

Stupid.

Our electrician put all his weight on what ended up being our guest room ceiling. And fell through.

Fortunately he landed on the bed. Unfortunately, his body was pretty beat up by the impact. And, duh, he was embarrassed. He immediately called a dry-wall guy to fix the gaping hole, then slowly stopped returning our phone calls to finish the rest.  

I was frustrated, but sympathetic. I mean… that’s one hell of a drop. I might want to forget that ever happened, too.

After a while, I stopped seeing the patch. And it never got fixed. But a few weeks ago, when I was getting the room ready for a friend’s weekend stay, I looked up and saw what her view would be every morning. She’s gonna wake up and see…. that.

So here we are. Years later. And this weekend we’re going to climb a ladder (read: hubs) and mud and sand our ceiling. While the evidence may disappear, this story will always be with me.

And now you.