What you are looking at is the left side of my master bedroom... well what's left of it anyway. That giant gaping hole in the ceiling? Yeah, that's where I fell from 8 feet up; no joke. Those black things at the bottom; those are the kneepads I was wearing, and that's where my wife found me sitting there wondering what the hell just happened.
Take it back to this morning when I completed daughter #2's bedroom and started on daughter #3's. The first action was to install a ceiling light in a room that only has a wall sconce. In order to do that? Yeah you guessed it, it meant going into the ceiling.
Now keep I mind I've done plenty of home renovations and I know what I'm doing. I'm a Maintenance Manager in my job so I know that safety always comes first. I also know I weight nearly 350 pounds so you can bet I'm extra careful when it comes to going into the rafters.
I had to enter the ceiling from my closet (just left of the picture). When I looked around in the ceiling I noticed someone had created a walkway to the middle of the ceiling and then there was another walkway down the middle of the house. The walkway down the middle ran across the ceiling joists. the walkway out to the middle ran parallel. My fatal flaw... Assuming the walkway out to the middle had support. As I crawled out onto the walkway all was good (the wall in the left of the picture was under me. Once I got a few more feet out there I was able to stand as well as hang onto some support beams. I was one step away from the middle walkway when everything gave way and all came crashing down. All the grey stuff you see is blown-in insulation. The boards you see are the walkway out the middle which I now know was only held up on one end by the support wall.
So at this point you're probably wondering how I'm doing? Miraculously I have nothing more than a couple scratches on my stomach and another on my elbow. No blood, no broken bones, no serious injuries. I laugh now, but the first thing I did when I stood up was move my hands all over my body looking to see if anything was sticking out of me (or into me for that matter) because under that pile of stuff is all my tools and painting stuff from the other bedrooms I've been working on. There's even some paint cans and a large toolbox under there; I am truly amazed that I did not get seriously hurt!
Anyway the room is not livable, so tonight we are living on the couch. We managed to clean up the insulation but that's only the beginning. Tomorrow we're going to move the bedroom into the downstairs (dining room) where we will live until I can get everything taken care of. I'll write more about it tomorrow, right now I just want to sit back and thank my lucky stars that I'm OK.
Day #34 went out with a bang. On to Day #35 (thankfully)
Stay Strong!
