He went into the attic to do something or other related to installing a new ceiling fan which had to be moved from the existing place.
The attic is not “finished” very well, with only a few plywood boards for a floor. Apparently, some of the floor boards were loose! He stepped on one, it slid, and he fell through the ceiling of the garage.
I, of course, was in the office reading the Dope when I heard crashing, banging, yelling and cursing. I ran to the garage, and there he was, standing on the work bench with his head through the ceiling. Cussing.
He scraped his leg up pretty good, (at least he was wearing long jeans!) and scraped his arm a little. The bruise on his leg swelled up to about the size of half an orange! A very purple orange. I got him some ice, and he sat still for about 15 minutes of that. Then he went back to working around the house, but not in the attic.
It bothered him to sit on it, but he said it felt better this morning.
I did much the same thing once. I fell through the ceiling into the master bedroom. Injuries were similar to your hubby’s. My neighbor, a career Army officer and a real smartass, gave my my “jump wings” the next day.
At least the workbench was there to catch him and make the distance he fell shorter. Could have been a lot worse - broken bones or scrotum to joist contact come to mind.
My MIL actually managed to do this to herself last year. She went up to the attic of the school where she worked to get some books stored up there–it was theoretically a proper attic–and she fell through the floor/ceiling, 12 feet onto a flat carpet. At least she missed the metal desk. By some kind of miracle, she escaped with only a busted foot.
No - it was before the second game. He wasn’t as upset before the second as after the second.
After reading your posts, I realize the floor WAS particle board. But it still wasn’t nailed down.
After we figured out he wasn’t too badly hurt, I did my wifely duty (no not that one!) of telling him how he SHOULD HAVE nailed those boards down! I couldn’t help it.
In high school I knew a girl who did this. While hiding in the attic when her parents came home unexpectedly as she was playing hooky. WHOMP She broke her ankle and was quite the laughingstock.
See, this is why when growing up my dad ALWAYS stressed the point to ONLY walk on the joists in the attic, because that’s not the floor, it’s the top half of the bedroom ceiling and if I walked on it, I’d go crashing through.
To this day I still don’t trust so-called “finished” attics with actual floors. I still try to keep my feet where I am fairly certain the joists are (since most finished attics are just bare plywood, I can easily see the nail lines.)
There is a scene in the movie National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation where Chevy Chase falls through the floor of his attic…and stops a couple of feet down, standing as he is on the top bunk of the bunk bed in his son’s room. Pretty funny.
Glad to hear everyone’s “fell through the ceiling” stories turned out mostly OK BTW.
Hey, attic access through the garage. Cool. He will no doubt be working on a permanent ladder or rudimentary stairs next.
This is why I now always carry my cell phone when my Wife is not home and I’m working on something. Better than nothing. I might just be alive enough to call for help. And I might even have a signal.
Well, my wife tried to kill me last week. We’re still moving in, and she had put some things on the stairs, which I told her wasn’t a good idea, as the stairs are:
highly polished hardwood
2)spiral in nature
hard and pointy with no lights
So I’m taking our plates downstairs to put in the sink after tacos de lengua de carne with homemade refied beans and rice and hot salsa, and my left foot goes out from under me, slipping on the very same damn shirt I had asked that she not put on the stairs not two hours in the past. One plate breaks and covers me with china shards and sour cream and cilantro, I’ve got beans in my ear, down my shirt, and I can’t see, it hurts so bad. The other plate drops out of my right hand and does a full “gloing-gloing-gloing” three rep spin before settling. Dead silence for ten seconds, then my wife calls down “Oh, come on, you are so faking.”
Later she told me she thought I was making more of it for comic effect, because, as she put it, “it sounded so funny, like the Stooges or something.”
So I have three bars of bruise in truly beautiful shades of red-blue-purple with greenish yellow edges and centers of red lines where the edges of the stairs were. Each bar is spaced exactly the distance between each stair, and the most impressive is on my left gluteal region, and measures about 11"x4".
To my credit, I didn’t get mad or yell, but calmly asked her when she actually did come down and start freaking out "Now what have we learned from this, darling?’
