Bad, bad, bad..what is it with old men and ladders?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Y’all might not know but Mr.Wrekker is much older than me.

I was awakened by a bang. I get up to go see ..dogs are clamoring around me thinking it’s early breakfast.

I walk out on the deck. The bang was a ginormous ladder being put up against the garage roof. My son is already on the roof. Taking screws out. His ladder is up there leaning on the higher two story roof.

Holy cow. I see my ancient(:grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes: ) husband as he stepped off the ladder onto the metal roofed garage. I swear to the stars he teetered a bit.

I told my daughter we gotta put a stop to this circus.

3 men, no wait Hamza went up too. 4 men on the roof. Two bigger boys eyeing the ladder. The twins are interested. “Get those boys outta there!” I sez.

First.

I’m not speaking well. So I couldn’t really voice my concern. But she understood.

Whew, she got the boys otherwise engaged.

I knew we had to replace a couple panels on the roof. But I just supposed my husband would call the original installers.

OH Nooooooo. Must save 20 cents! DIY time. I really hate that!

I was signing at my husband. “Get your old butt down.”

He says “woman, shut those hands up, I’m fine”

My vision: His crumbled old body on the garage apron and his kids in a circle around him. Crying.

I don’t wanna deal with that on a very hot Arkansas day. Come on Mother Nature, the universe, the PTB… gimme a break!

When do men finally realize they can’t do that? What age?

I have plans to make.

2

For my father, he didn’t “realize” it until he was in his early 70s, when he fell off a ladder, landed flat on his back on the garage floor, breaking three ribs, a shoulder blade, and an elbow.

In the aftermath of that, I pointed out to him that Max McGee, who had been a member of Vince Lombardi’s champion Green Bay Packer teams in the 1960s, and who was just a year older than my dad, had died a few months earlier, when he had gone up onto his roof with a ladder to clean leaves out of the gutters, and fell off.

“NO MORE LADDERS!”

3

My FIL would agree with you, but it took a catastrophic fall to change his mind. The in-laws lived in a house with a vaulted ceiling, and the HVAC filter was about 12’ up in an air intake on one wall. The floor directly below it was tile. He propped up his ladder and climbed, and while he was futzing around with the filter housing, the feet of the ladder slid. He fell, legs through the rungs, down onto the tile floor. One knee was shattered and that leg was twisted up in the rungs of the ladder to the point where the fire department cut the ladder apart to be able to get him onto a stretcher. After a couple of surgeries and months of rehab, that leg is nearly two inches shorter than the other, and he firmly believes that ladders should be outlawed. Yes, he actually advocates making ownership of ladders illegal.

ETA: IIRC, he was about 80 when this happened.

4

Never

5

They still remember when they could still get it up get up it.

6

One thing can be fixed with some creativity. (Or pills)

The other cannot. Unless you can get the fire department out with that catch 'em/trampoline thingy.

:rofl:

7

I have always avoided using ladders unless absolutely necessary, and pretty much refuse to use tall ones. I can’t claim any particular wisdom; it’s just that I have a fear of heights.

8

It depends on how perceptive they are regarding their own physical limitations. I no longer get up on a ladder for anything, not even to change a lightbulb. And I no longer do manual labour that involves low altitudes, either, such as needing to get down on my knees, because getting up again is a challenge! So I pretty much rely on others to do that stuff for me while I watch, and then they watch while I pay them!

9

2018 thread: I have become anti-ladder

10

I live in a older house that has windows that require swapping out screens for “storm” windows twice a year. Two of the windows are at second story level. I did that for about twenty years even realizing that eventually one of three things was going to happen. Either I’d fall from the ladder, drop the window or both. I’d climb the extension ladder with the heavy storm window in one hand, hoik it up into position and quick flip the turnbuckles to secure it into place.

Well, about five years ago, after extensive skull sweat, I came up with a new process. I climbed the ladder, drilled a hole above those two windows and screwed in a big-ass hook and now can do the entire operation from the ground using rope, some of those mountain-climbing clip thingies, and an extending pole. The ladder was put into the garage where it sits to this day.

I joke with people that if you give me twenty years to consider a problem that I will come up with a solution. I’m 73 now.

11

Funny ladder story: The house next door used to be a revolving door of renters and owners. Long ago someone moved out and left a really nice Werner ladder behind the house. Well, it sat there a while, so I decided to take care of it, just in case.

A couple of tenants came and went, house sat empty again. Another ladder left behind.

Went through a few owners, ended up empty again after a few years. Yep. Abandoned ladder behind the house.

I’m just keeping them safe in case anyone wants to claim them.

12

You could stack them on top of each other to make a taller ladder, like this completely safe configuration.

13

Youtube has many fail videos involving either idjit DIY Americans doing ladder pratfalls or poor hardworking 3rd world OSHA-free workers building rickety ladder towers.

I wince every time I see one.

14

That pic kinda reminds me of Son-of-a-wrek’s configuring. I’ve seen him on a ladder on work bench tryna get back up in the barn loft when the stairs(?) fell down. Of course, they fell down because he backed the tractor into them.

15

I spent my whole working life with ladders strapped to the top of my work truck. I am now 73 and have been retired for almost six years. Sunflower has removed my ladder privileges.

16

I spent a lot of years climbing ladders as an electrician, so I knew how to do it safely. That said, I got rid of my extension ladder years ago. After that, anything that required using more than a 6’ ladder was relegated to a contractor. Nowadays, I don’t even have a step-stool and have no need for one. Some years ago my eldest son was trying to clean out his gutters when his ladder kicked out from under him. He ended up with a fractured forearm. He now hires someone.

17

I did my share of homeowner DIY and owned step and extension ladders.

When I was a kid I was standing right there when a neighbor dad had an extension ladder collapse from under him & he busted an ankle. That made an impression on little me. I’ve always been real cautious around ladders. Not phobic, but very deliberate and conservative. Never had a fall, but had a couple scares.

Around age 45 I bought a big 2-story house on a hill with walkout basement. So the rear eaves were 3+stories above ground level. Ground that steeply sloped away from the house It also had 1:1 roofs.

I showed a pic of the house to my construction worker brother who solemnly instructed me to never even think about getting up on that roof. Not even the parts with “low” single story eaves. Nor set the ladder up on the side-sloping ground. I took his words to heart. I could still kill myself indoors with the stair trunks & two-story ceilings though. Sold the ladders when I moved to single-story quarters at age ~55.

Now I get by with a three-step indoor step ladder with a high handrail and a small folding stepstool. I last used the folding stepstool a couple weeks ago for the first time in a year-ish. And thought seriously afterwards about getting rid of it; too easy to stand on it with nothing else to hold onto for stability.

I’m probably safe from ladders for the rest of my life. Now I just need to worry about drunk drivers and jealous husbands. :zany_face:

18

I’ll still get on stepladders–I have nice type A ladders–but for anything higher I’ve learned to rent a scissor lift or boom lift. Well worth the money.

19

When I was a little girl/teen my family did a lot of serious DIY. What I was taught is that anybody using an extension ladder should be assisted by another person holding the foot of the ladder. An unstabilized two-footed ladder just leaning up against something is not sufficiently firm to use for standing-on-while-working purposes, as opposed to just climbing-up-to-next-level.

(We also wore safety belts when working at height, so no falling off roof and going splat.)

Many elderly people of any gender can still do a lot of physically challenging labor. What they generally can’t do is get away with all the riskier corner-cutting stunts that they survived in their younger years. (A lot of young DIYers don’t survive such stunts, in fact, but they’re the ones who don’t become elderly DIYers.)

20

There are old ladder-climbers and there are bold ladder-climbers but there are no old, bold ladder-climbers.