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The Craziest Home Repair Ever

If you are about to purchase your first ever home, listen up. The moment the legal documents are signed and the keys are passed into your hands, expect there to be a home repair or two waiting for you when you come in the front door. It’s inevitable. Something will break and need fixing, especially if you have kids.

home repairCan I get an “Amen” current homeowners?

I think we all know home maintenance comes with the territory of home ownership. We generally anticipate and prepare for the appliance that dies, the toilet that leaks and the air conditioner that gives up the ghost in the middle of summer. But some a home repair can also happen because of a bizarre reasons we could never have anticipated. Know what I mean?

Well I think I’ve got dibs on the craziest event ever that caused a home repair. It wasn’t the baseball through the bay window or the overflowing, second-floor bathroom sink. No, I prefer to create damage with a bit of flair. It all happened when I was eight.

A Crazy Accident Leads to a Home Repair

My sister and I loved Matchbox cars when we were young. We collected them, traded them and raced them all over the house. We had an older home that contained hardwood floors throughout. This made for great racetracks at various locations around the house.

Our favorite location to race our cars was upstairs. We had a long hallway that led from the three bedrooms at one end, past a closet, to a den and the bathroom entrance at the far end. Laying on the hardwood floor was a carpet runner that we would roll up and then race our cars up and down the hallway. It was a blast!

But that was not even the best part. At the far end of the hallway near the bathroom entrance was a small, square grouping of floorboards that could be removed, exposing the 8-12 inch gap between the upstairs floor and the downstairs ceiling. The previous homeowners had installed an electrical junction box in that space underneath the floor and never secured the boards back in place.

This square hole in the middle of the floor became our imaginary “death trap.” We sped our cars down the hallway watching with glee as they nosedived off the cliff and into the dark, dusty crater below. Time and time again we enjoyed this game until…

One day, I’m standing next to the opening in the floor watching another one of my sister’s cars plunge into the abyss. I happen to look down for a moment at the square hole in the floor. To this day I don’t know what I was thinking or what came over me, but I just had an overwhelming sensation…to jump…in the hole.

And I did!

And there was no way 1/2 inch of drywall and plaster was going to hold the weight of my frame. I went plummeting straight down through the downstairs ceiling. Except, I didn’t end up going all the way through the hole. My free-falling body caught itself underneath my armpits so that my head and arms were at floor level of the upstairs and my legs were dangling and kicking widely in the airspace of the downstairs. My chin was literally resting on the upstairs floor with my arms jutting upward and outward at angles like spider legs.

I was in sheer panic mode. My skinny arms did not have the strength to push myself up out of my predicament. I was screaming at my sister to get help. In stunned disbelief she sat there – motionless – unable to utter a cry for help.

My aunt was visiting at the time and just happened to be in the upstairs bathroom. I’ll never forget the look on her face when she walked out of the bathroom and saw me struggling. It must have looked like my head and arms had been decapitated because that is all she could see of me.

She quickly yelled for my mom who was in her bedroom. She ran frantically down the hall. Each one of them grabbed an arm and pulled me up out of the hole. I was perfectly fine except for some minor scraping underneath my armpits where they had rubbed against the upstairs floor as I struggled to extricate myself.

But oh, what a hole I had created in the downstairs ceiling. There was debris and dust for a mile in every direction. And of course, my dad gets the call at his office….“Brian fell through the ceiling!” He comes racing home. It was quite the spectacle.

We spent the next hour cleaning up that mess. My dad spent the weekend fixing the hole in the ceiling. But not before he took a hammer and some nails from his workshop and permanently secured those loose boards in the upstairs hallway.

Our “death trap” was never used for playtime again. May it rest in peace.

Questions: What’s your craziest home repair story? 

Next Post: Cashiers Gone Wild

Prior Post: Beating the Credit Card Reward System

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Comments

  1. Home renovation is one of the most common and famous way to add a new look to your home. Many homeowners are become very serous for home renovation, you have share here useful and also effective tips for home renovation in efficient way.  Use a good paint for your home because painting is one of the easy and best way to give a great and new look to your home and you can also do it yourself.

  2. What an interesting story! Best to keep up with repairs when you’re a home owner.

  3. electricians Lindum says

    Having your air conditioning system break down in the middle of the summer heat is something you want to avoid. The best way to keep the unit running is by conducting routine maintenance. This will keep your home comfortable even when it is hot outside

  4. The shame of it is that there probably wasn’t an easy way to capture that on video and put it on Youtube! Great story, thanks!

  5. LOL, as I read the “But not before he took a hammer and…” I was bracing myself for an “Uh-oh, Brian got his tail whipped” story. Glad he only used the hammer to fix the ceiling. He must’ve had time to calm down on the way home from work – I know my dad would’ve needed that. 🙂

    • Interestingly enough, I don’t remember getting in trouble for this. I think they were so glad I didn’t hurt myself worse than I did. Maybe that helped them forget about any punishment.

  6. LOL! Isn’t crazy the things we do as kids and now wonder what they heck were we thinking? Sadly, I don’t have anything that can top falling through a ceiling and getting stuck.

  7. When I was younger my twin brother and I were very rough on stuff. I don’t think we ever punched any holes in some dry wall but we did flood a barn on about 3 different occasions and kill a couple gold fish by putting Tang in the tank but other than that we did pretty good.

  8. Do you really still have “The Boss”? 🙂

  9. Wow, that’s a great story. It’s crazy what goes through our minds at times, isn’t it? Our craziest one was when I was 13 or 14 and my 7 year old step brother stuffed all sorts of sponges and brushes from the kitchen into our downstairs toilet we shared. Of course, it caused all sorts of issues as my Dad did not know what had been done. He ended up having to remove the toilet altogether to get them all out & fix it.

  10. Awesome story Brian. I love the thought process that you used to jump. My craziest is just my dog ramming her head through our drywall. It was funny until I needed to fix it.

  11. Incredible story, haha. Nothing like that, but kids do the most insane things to the house that leave you wondering, “How did they even think of that…” (my cousin once defiled an oil painting with mustaches).

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