Hi folks,
I’m researching a book on home remodeling and building horror stories, disasters, and mishaps. Anyone out there know of any? It could have happened by a homeowner or on a job site by a builder or subcontractor.
One guy I know went to change a light bulb in a ceiling fan – not the most complicated job. He ended up falling off his ladder onto the kitchen table, part of which bashed a hole in the wall while the ladder smashed through a nearby window. Oh, and by trying to save himself he ripped the whole fan out of the ceiling.
This one’s worse – a builder was doing an addition and had to build carefully around a old oak tree without damaging or killing it. As soon as the last coat of paint dried the tree fell on the addition and destroyed everything. Ouch!
I’d love to hear more if they’re out there.
Sam
Replies
Back in Illinois, a neighbor did a "Pop the Top" as they call them, which is adding a second floor to a ranch style home. Unfortunatly, one night there was a rain. The crew was still framing the new walls, and when they left for the evening they had not tarped off the open roof, which left the first floor ceiling exposed to the rain. The drywall and insulation got saturated, and his wife nearly got a broken nose when the drywall ceiling collapsed in the bedroom in the middle of the night.
Contractor agreed to redo the downstairs too after that.
Rebuilding my home in Cypress, CA
Also a CRX fanatic!
Welcome to Breaktime.
Check out the Spec House from Hell story.
The Blue Sapphire Massacre story is also a good one.
BTW - We like it when people fill out their profiles...(-:
Blue Sapphire Massacre This discussion does not exist
The link works fine fer me. But the thread is in the tavern. Maybe you don't have tavern access?
If you don't lay down, no one can step on you
Ah-hah
Here's the story - Just in case some of the rest of you don't have tavern access. (Although this may get moved there anyway)The Blue Sapphire Massacre
by IMERCThis toy poodle is wired and high strung and then some. Friendly little critter though. The dog was taught to jump up into your arms. The HO comes home and lets the dog into the work site. Zing... Jump.... I Step aside [hands are full]....... SPLASH!!! Right into the 5 gallons of Sapphire Blue paint.Then there is this explosion of dog, paint and general pandemonium. The dog then shifts to warp 12. Starts running every where. Runs into and ricochets off of every thing. Over the tops of furniture.... Zooming at break neck speed... Nothing is safe. Lamps, pictures, vases and what ever is on the tables is now finding it's way to the floor. The dog even came back thru for a reload of paint several times. So much for the formal dining and living rooms. Major plush carpet. And we weren't working in either of those rooms.The HO tries to catch the dog... Steps in the paint... At this point picture the frantic fancy foot work and flaying arms in the effort to stay up right. That wasn't about to happen. Down she goes taking two step ladders with her and adding a gallon of much darker trim blue to the mess with a huge splash. The 8' ladder takes out one of the 4/0 - 7/0 24 lite brand new, 1 hour old french doors. The other ladder goes for one upmanship and does a number on zillion year old lead glass window that I had just finished installing.Three rooms trashed. The dog says enough of this and heads upstairs with the freshly dipped in paint HO right behind it. My helper, the actual painter, sits down in all this mess and she starts to cry. I don't think a room, person or a piece of furniture in that house survived the Blue Sapphire Massacre.The lady's husband almost has a heart attack from laughing so hard. Latter he is found sitting at the kitchen table plastered in paint, LHAO and having a beer.Stuff like this happens if I get too close to paint. Me and paint just don't along together well. Learned to be gun shy. I wasn't doing any of the painting. I was just in the room..When that dog hit the paint I think I recall the sound more of a splat, maybe with some Qs, than a splash. That one of a kind window came all the way from Italy and the care that was taken with it was monumental in its' own right till the ladder decided to leave the room.Oh but the woman stepping in the paint. You had to see it. When she stepped in the paint she started to slide across the room. Her arms and legs where flaying the air so hard they were a blur. She tried to go 15 directions at once. It actually seemed as though she was succeeding. Her feet came out from under her and she almost completes a full back flip. With her toes aimed at the ceiling... Man did she come down hard. Her husband is kneeling on the floor LHAO, beet red, holding his side with one hand and using the other to keep his face out of the paint. Latter when I went into the kitchen he told me to finish his beer because that one kept running out of his nose. Then he started to LHAO again and about falls off the chair. Month latter he's still laughing as he recants the story. The dog had a blue tint to it for months.When the ladders did their thing the AW SH!T musta had 1200 letters in it. A week latter and I'm still having a problem grasping what I saw. After that every time I saw the husband he would bust out laughing till he choked. Mumble something about the dog and paint and laugh all the harder.Moral of the story... Sub the painting.
OH MY GOD,
How could anyone follow a story like that?
TRIGGER
Stuff like this happens if I get too close to paint. Me and paint just don't along together well.
Wait, I thought it was Frenchy who always had distasters around paint <g> . . . ?Occupational hazard of my occupation not being around (sorry Bubba)
That was Imerc's story
Welcome to the Taunton University of Knowledge FHB Campus at Breaktime. where ... Excellence is its own reward!
If you had ever seen Imerg type , you would understand the feat typing that post really was for him.
Tim
Oh how true---Hunt and Peck would run circles around him.Now Oreo on the other hand can hold his own.Mike"Even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while" Mitremike c. 1990" I reject your reality and substitute my own"
Adam Savage---Mythbusters
Wow. Thanks Boss. Great stories both. What ever happened to your spec house?
"What ever happened to your spec house?"
We couldn't sell it, so we ended up living in it.
The grass is always greener when you leave the sprinkler on.
My helper was cutting up floor boards in a 2nd flr apt. with a SawzAll. I was standing behind him watching the cut and told him to make as shallow cut as possible. Unfortunately, the plumbers who installed the lines for the radiator had the lines touching the under side of the floor boards! I must have set a record for the basement 50yd dash as I ran down the stairs to the outside, around the back of the building, in the back door of the 1st flr apt. (which I had the extreme luck of earliery unlocking!) and down the basement to shut off the water. It is amazing how much water comes out of a 1/2" pipe!! Needless to say we had a bit of a mess to clean up in the 1st floor apt. kitchen. But wait, it gets better. Later that night the landlord gets a call from the downstairs tenant. After hearing somewhat of a commotion in her kitchen, she entered to find the upstairs tenant's cat on her counter. Seems the cat was investigating in the bathroom upstairs, stepped down between the floor joists onto the old plaster lath ceiling and then on to the exposed suspended fiberglass ceiling of the downstairs kitchen. We covered the floor every night after that!!
Edited 3/5/2006 5:15 pm ET by wmtcarp
I've visited the SHFH with Boss and family safely dwelling there , really nice house, although Boss said he'd not do the sunken living room caper again. Exceptional basement for a shop, highest basement ceiling I've ever seen outside a commercial structure.
You can bet the joists visible inthe basement were trusses!
I bought a major fixer-upper in the 80's. The newspaper ad read "how good is your imagination". That should have been the first clue to move on.
After many years of slow progress, we borrowed enough money to finish the project. The paint on the walls was barely dry when we had our first flood. 10 years of work washed away. We were underinsured so I tackled the rebuilding effort myself. Three after the first flood, I was just finishing the trim work. The next day hurricane Floyd reversed my rebuilding efforts. That was the last day we lived in that house.
The disaster is nowhere near as bad as recovering from the disaster, but that is a real long story. If someone told me this story I would think most of it was fiction.
We are high up on a hill now (still building) but it won't flood there. The wife still blames me for mother nature's wrath. I can't say I am bored.
Well, there area number of such tales here. I'm not sure how a person could Search for them, though.
One that's not here, far as I know:
I had made enough money to pick up a brand-new, recently put on the market, real-live, real-red Milwaukee Sawzall. The remodeling work was going great guns--or at least enough to keep a few hands hired; but we needed an "edge" to keep pace. So a tool to make us more efficient was just the thing.
We're working in a house, converting a bedroom into a home office, which was getting a sealed-unit fireplace and cultured stone surround. We were also ripping out the existing closet to replace it with floor-to-ceiling built-ins.
So, I'm all happy to show off our new wonder of production. I take the Sawzall, and lay into the stub wall of the closet where it "pokes into" the room, and make short work of excising the closet. I have to run off to another job, so I pass the sawzall off to my segundo--who still has ideas on how to use the neat new tool I've brought dancing 'round dancing just behind the eyes.
I get back about an hour later and there's a quiet just "looming" around the site; a palpable sort of thing, but with no one thing to be that "ah hah!" reason why. For some reason my entire crew has gone all sheepish--everybody is concentrating on work and doing the best possible job they can, there's something that will stand out at a person. I find the segundo, finally, he has a note pad and the yellow pages out, and he's been furiously scribbling.
All I do is raise an eyebrow. He leads me over to where the fireplace cutout is going in; then we walk around to the back side of that wall, into the living room. It's only a small mess. The couch that had been against that wall would never be the same, ever again. It seems, he explains, that his vocabulary has gotten twisted up, and instead of "aparte" he had said "separte," which sounds just like "separe," or sever, as in 'make the cut.' So, that's just what happened. Through the only one thickness of wallboard which just needed the studs--only--cut for where we were sneaking a header in to go over the back of the fireplace insert.
I tell him to not sweat a furniture company, I'll work out that with the owner. Nope, that's not what the yellow pages are for. No, he's looking for somebody who can come un-traumatize the wiener-dog who had been sleeping, soundly and completely, on the other end of the ill-fated divan just before it gained a hinge . . .
Just tiny, wide, couldn't have dilated any more at all, eyes as far under an armoire in the corner as they can go.
Whole array of treats before the armoire, too--looks like some sort of bourgeois canine altar with offerings neatly arrayed around it.
Luckily all worked out in the end. Stand-offish dog shot into owner's arms and became much more companionable; couch was an heirloom that really needed recycling before it was inheirited. A bit of cash, some freebies; much laughter--turned into a good exchange. Well, and three people who will never, but ever, never toss that reciprocating saw up against something without seeing what's behind it . . .
We had a ship hit a crane yesterday and knock it over.. 2+3=7
BB,
You, my friend, have raised terseness to a new high.
SamT
When I was out in Colorado, I think th eyear that J Lennon and R reagan got shot, I was on a condo project.These things were three stories tall and had something like 12-16 units in each floor. There were several buildings going up one following another staged to keep lots of crews working.
Winter Park COSo one day in Jan or Feb, the weather waas great, sunshine and everyone was steamrolling. The latest building was up to top plates, the crane had just placed the roof trusses upside down across the top, and the crews had just come down and out of the building for lunch in the commons area where the rest of us were eating. One guy stayed up on the third floor to eat alone and then try to take a nap in the sun.There were 50-=60 of us eating when we heard a wind roll down off the mountain through the trees, and hit the project. That building lifted in front of our eyes a good 18" and set back down again
And down
and down
and down!That sucker pancaked one floor at a time.
There were Appliances stored in teh first floor that had jusrt been delivered for the first building which was nearly completed that got squashed!
The super immediately got everyone lined up for roll call
The guy taking a nap woke up and crawled out, white as a sheet, needing to take a sheet, and saying words like "Oh Sheet! man!" but totally unhurt - and nobody else was in it. Ten minutes later, a full crew would have been setting trusses and ridden her down.That wind was totally gone in five minutes too.
Welcome to the Taunton University of Knowledge FHB Campus at Breaktime. where ... Excellence is its own reward!
> That building lifted in front of our eyes a good 18" and set back down again ....
Wow.
Was there any investigation into how it failed? Tie downs not in yet, something like that? Or was the wind just beyond what it was designed for?
When something that bad happens, it's a good idea to find out why so as to not have that happen again.
-- J.S.
O yeah!The pl;ace was like a crime scene until OSHA got through.I don't remember the official version, but there were two things...One was that not all the sheathing was on yet, and there were box beams and TJIs in the floorsystems - so this whole thing resembled a box kite is some ways. It was a big trap for wind to get caught in, and there was a fereak wind pass by.These are not all that uncommon in the mountains. I'm sure that the Indians and Spanish probably had a word for the things. If you've ever experienced one, and have an imagination that can put you in prehistoric times, you can picture how primitive peolpes came to believe in otherworldly spirits...I was on a 12/12 roof shingling away once on a 2x10 plank over jhacks with a bundle of shingles on it. Small close valley with mountains rimming it and only one way in.
About lunchtime, I could hear a roar come sliding down a bare slope that sounded like an avalanche, making me turn to look, but there was nothing moving. A couple of minuites later, the wind hit the house and literally lifted the plank with me and the shingles up in the air several inches, and set us alll back down again! a few more minutes (with me plastering my face to the deck) and it was all over.The other possible factor in that building collapse is based on rumours on site. One of the labourers had gotten fired the day before this happened. teh word was that he had been seen removing some of the diagonal braces in the first floor AFTER he got canned when he should not have been on site. - the other version is that he got canned for removing the diagonal braces...Personally, what I saw actually happen, I don't think it was likely that the braces would have made much difference - but then it isn't the kind of thing you can test...The experience was awesome tho - picture fifty guys with lunch hanging out of their mouths as they freeze in place with eyes wide open! The a lot of four letter words...
Welcome to the Taunton University of Knowledge FHB Campus at Breaktime. where ... Excellence is its own reward!
I put my boxers on backwards under my bibs.
And it was really cold that day.
I have heard those winds called "horizontal tornados" Friend of mine, living in sage brush covered mountains, heard what sounded like a freight train then saw a singlewide mobile home picked up and rolled like a tumbleweed. It never did hit his house.
I just heard this story 1 hour ago.
I'm visiting family here in Iowa and was talking to a friend, His daughter who lives in Minn. just lost her entire house, which was just recently completed.
The daughter and her husband had went out leaving their 4 children(high school aged and down) home alone.
Shortly after leaving They(parents) received a phone call telling them that the smoke detectors had gone off and they couldn't find anything wrong. Parents told the children to get out of the house and they would be right home.
Just as the last child meanders out the door the house blows up!
Fire inspectors determined that there was a pinhole leak in the gas line that may have been their from day one. Obviously something sparked the gas and it blew.
All the kids were fine, well maybe not there underwear, but physically fine, house and all contents completely destroyed.
Doug
Edited 3/3/2006 6:11 pm ET by DougU
Well, yer gonna neeed some stories better than those anemic paragraphs you have so far to get this book published.
And you have found the right collection of yahoos to fill the pages for you here.
The glitch that you might find is that when we sign up to be a part of this forum, paret of the agreement is that we agree that Taunton has some sort of rights to what we say.
But then, they are a publisher, and you ARE going to need a publisher for your book, so make contact, make itr early, and make it often -with the powers that be.
Any how -
I have a BIL who was sent to cut the sill lower for a window openning. It was one of those high small windows in a storage area of the house that was being converted to some sort of living space and needed light. He went back and forth, checking everything on both sides of the wall to be sure he got it right, then went inside to have at it with his sawsall. Things got harder cutting as he went along, but he figured he just had a dul blade and would change it when it finally broke. He kept horsing it thru and finally finished the cut.
Then he grabbed the chunk of wall to haul it out and discovered the real reason why the cutting was hard. The wooden step ladder he had leaned against the exterior wall just below the window sill was now a four and a half foot ladder segemnt with a cute little stool.
He didn't have too much luick with ladders. He was carrying a bundle of shingles up an extension ladder once when near the top, a hornet decided to flirt with him and nibble on his lip. Fortunately the shingle bundle landed first. Had it come down on top of his still flailing arms, he might have gotten hurt worse.
I was on a job once re-roofing a warehouse type building. The GC was a clip-board type whop used various subs to do the work. There was a rotten spot on this roof calling for a change work order and he was a cheap sort so he wanted to be there to verify every last nail used over the original.
Carp make four cuts in the decking and said to the GC standing there, "Do Not step on that stop!"
well for some reason he thought he just had to test things oput and stepped right in the middle and pounded with his heel. This roof was a good 14' above a concrete floor below. GC broke his wrist slinging it to grab at the edges while disappearing from sight. Other than that, the lost ego, and the big bruise where he landed on his money roll, he was fine.
Broken wrist reminds me of another disastor.
This guy was a walking disastor man. I saw him fall off three roofs in three months. When i finally quit working with him, I was labeled as havinga bad atitude because I would not take the stoopid chances he did.
He was rolling felt on a steep one about 18/12, aworking from toeboards with no fall protection. I was on the ridge hich had a 4/12 on the reverse side handing backrolled feltpaper to him. I was looking down over the ridge when I saw him miss his step, and go careening down, looking up at me with beseeching eyes. I made a half hearted grab at him even tho he was a good 6-8' away so there was no way I could reach his outstretched hand. As his head disappeared over the eave of a good twenty foot fall, I remember saying, "Oh sh1t!"
He broke his wrist on landing but other than that he was not too bad off. He was back on the job a day or two later, thanking God for his life. He was a very religious man in some ways.
So a fe days later when he and I were having lunch alone, he said, "There's something I would like to ask you about when I fell the other day...Did i say anything - you know...like a bad word?"
"Naaw, you didn't, but I said, "Oh sh1t!"
You wouldn't believe the relief in his eyes! He had been living with a shadow of fear that he had almost died with the last words on his lips being something unholy. His perceptions were all messed up in the passion of the moment.
Welcome to the
Taunton University of Knowledge FHB Campus at Breaktime.
where ...
Excellence is its own reward!
I was 16 yrs old and helping my Uncles build a house for a family member moving up here from Texas. We had the first floor framed walls sheathed and had the floor joists up on the second story and were putting the 3/4 T&G when someones cousin shows up to see how things are going, I guess my uncle Chet knew this woman and yells hey Joyce grab that piece of plywood and hand it up here. I was carrying more sheets inside and see her bend over to grab it and I start running and yelling "put it down thats the stairwell" she doesn't here me and falls into the basement I grabbed the sheet just in time before it followed her into the basement.
I look down into the basement and she is lying in 6" of water on the basement slab, she fell 10' flat on her back and she is screaming and not moving. I jumped through the stairwell hole into the basement and this is December in Michigan the water she is in is maybe 40 degrees. I look around and see some two inch rigid foam and she rolls on her side and lays on the sheet. She can't move and is going to freeze to death before the ambulance even shows up.
The paramedics show up and strap her to a board and have the idea to use ropes to pull the board through the stairwell, when they are ready to pull her up one side of guys with ropes pulls on "2"and the board flops over and nearly dump her back on her face. She suffered a broken back and pelvis
One that comes to mind is the time the elec. on a job decided to recycle his excess wires. Figured if he threw them in the fireplace (it was a cold winter morning, unoccupied house, so we had the fireplace going while we worked), it would melt the plastic off, leaving the copper.
The smoke came out so fast and thick, he figured the flue was closed. It wasn't. So when he tried to open it, he ended up closing it. If he thought the smoke was coming out heavy before, you should have seen it once the flue was closed! The room was so thick with smoke you couldn't see your hand in front of your face! So he grabs a shovel, makes his way to the fireplace, scoops the buring pile of wires, and heads for the patio doors. Dripping burning plastic onto the wood flooring the whole way.
He finally got the smoke cleared out. Ended up spending the day with TSP trying to clean the black soot off the mantle/wall/ceiling. Ended up having to pay for a repaint of the whole room, not to mention some serious repairs to the wood flooring.
"he...never charged nothing for his preaching, and it was worth it, too" - Mark Twain
First and only FHB publication was on the aftermath of Mt. St Helens blowup.
My cheap cabin near Mt St. Helens, titled ' A ten year roof', FHB GM, Nov, 1990.
some guys i know were painting a house after they had finished the homeowner was delighted, they are very good painters.the chimney was very high up and had not been touched by paint for years.the job was so good the homeowner said "well while you are here and the work is so good would you paint the chimney" so the guys got their longest ladders and climbed to the chimney very carefully one of them started painting as usual perfectly, then with his last stroke of the brush he knocks over his can of paint onto the roof ,destroying the roof and of coarse the good job they were after doing
(about 1970) I actually saw this, no joke. I may have been 10 or 11 at the time. My brother in law was a hippie from the 60's. Did the gardening deal. Somehow he decides using the septic tank as a source of fertalizer. He pumps the sewage into 55 gallon drums and seals the tops. He then leaves them in the hot summer sun. My Dad notices that the tops are starting to bulge out . So carefully they open the bun on the top of the drum. WOOOSH!!!!!!!!!!! I saw a 30ft gyser sprout up. All of us away from the mess laughed all day long. My brother in law opening the bun got it in the face.
Yes, my first marriage!"Don't take life too seriously, you are not getting out of it alive"
Last thursday drywall tapers parked in the steep driveway of house we're building. I think he forgot to set parking brake.
Van was wedged so tight between pole and hydrant that the pole is now leaning and the hydrant broke. It was an old hydrant so it broke deep down so I didn't get to see a geyser.
The van driver has no insurance.
Within 2 hours 2 reps from the scool board arrived because a neighbor called in concern for the 10 or so kids that would have been in the way of the van had it happened 12 hour later.
Looking at the front bumper, I'd say that the van has prior experience
I don’t know if this qualifies as a disaster, but it is certainly a mishap. A few years ago my wife and I were gutting & remodeling our rancher while living in it. It was kinda like camping for 18 months, but being recently married we figured if we could put up with each other during that project, the rest would be smooth sailing.
We were at the drywall stage and the supplier had delivered the sheetrock while I was out of town on business and they had it standing on edge against two of the outside walls. One of the walls had three Andersen narrowline windows ganged together and the 12’ drywall spanned the width of the window. I was a little concerned about the weight of the drywall leaning against this window wall and had the bright idea that I would pull on the drywall stack to gauge just how much weight was pushing on the wall by watching for any deflection in the wall.
My plan was to rock it away from the wall just a tiny bit while bracing myself against it to keep it from falling over. I forget just how many sheets were there, but we later figured it was over 700 lbs. Well the first two tugs on the stack didn’t budge it at all. Looking back on it I should have extrapolated from this bit of information that maybe if it did start moving I wouldn’t be able to stop it. However, being younger and dumber (relatively speaking) than I am now I gave it a real manly pull. It moved and the good news was the wall didn’t deflect at all.
The bad news was that the stack slowly moved past vertical and despite my best blocking sled form, gained speed as it headed for the floor. Since I spent a crucial second or two or three trying to hold it in place, I wasn’t able to jump clear of the falling stack and my leg was trapped between the drywall and the floor. And I mean trapped…the bottom pieces of drywall formed a curve over my leg and I could not budge.
The sound of the crash was fairly impressive and my wife who was taking a shower thought the house was collapsing. She heard my girlish scream as the pain in my foot/ankle/knee made it to my brain and out my mouth and she came running out immediately – as in right away - without taking the time to grab a towel. She says it was because she was concerned about finding me alive, but I suspect she was running to the phone book to get the number of our life insurance company so she could file the claim promptly.
Anyway, she did find me alive and stuck and asked the logical question…..”What did you do that for?”. We got past the “why” of the situation fairly quickly since I didn’t think it was so important at the time. Instead we moved on to the “what next” which involved a naked lady looking around for something to use as a lever that would slide next to my leg and could be used to raise the drywall enough for me to pull my leg out. A 2x6 on our back porch was handy enough and not in clear view of our neighbors (we think). After a few moments we got the 2x6 in far enough and after a few attempts were able to move the stack just enough to get me out.
This was the first and last time I was ever rescued by a naked woman and I now only move drywall two sheets at a time.
I, for one don't believe that ever happened - we need pictures to prove it.Remodeling Contractor just on the other side of the Glass City
That sounds like neither a disaster nor a mishap...More like one of the most unique fantasies I have ever...Hmmm...new thread idea!
Welcome to the Taunton University of Knowledge FHB Campus at Breaktime. where ... Excellence is its own reward!
A framer I know was building his own house on a walkout lot. He and one of his crew were spending a Saturday drinking and painting the hardi siding.
Because of the grading on the side of the house there was no easy way to set up scaffolding so he was using his lift and the platform. Due to the grading he had the lift boom extended out quite a ways and things were going fine until they decided to drag the cooler of ice and beer up onto the platform. Sure enough the lift tipped forward and the platform knocks the brand new AC unit off the side of the house and crushes it. Luckily neither of them got hurt.
My sister used to be married to a man whose family supplied us with lots of great laughs.
There was the time one of the brothers decided to do something nice for his mom and install a skylight in the kitchen ceiling. He bought the kit, cut the hole in the kitchen ceiling, then called my sister's husband to come and help him cover the hole. Why? Turns out there was a bedroom above the kitchen.
i'm still chuickling over that! I think you have a finalist in the running.Wonderfully understated word picture!
Welcome to the Taunton University of Knowledge FHB Campus at Breaktime. where ... Excellence is its own reward!
When city folks move to the country they are rarely prepared for the many changes that are due in their
lifestyles, with perhaps one of the least expected changes being in their relationships with their neighbors. Now
don't get me wrong -- most city people expect that rural folks will be friendlier and more, well, "neighborly"
than their city cousins, and this is for the most part true, but neighborly relationships are also much more
complex, what with fence lines, loose cattle, shared drives, and field rentals. And, of course, when folks from
the city discover that they can't "do it all", they often have to hire their new neighbors to help out with repairs,
field work, and the like.
So it was that when we "bought the farm" we also unknowingly bought into a relationship with Eb and
Flo Swenson, our neighbors to the north.
Eb and Flo were a strange pair. Eb was tall, thin as a rail, with blonde hair long since turned white.
He spoke (when he spoke at all) with a hint of Swedish, but his entire vocabulary seemed to consist only of "ja",
"nie", and, every afternoon at five o'clock sharp, "Well, see ya tamarra then," an expression that occasionally
seemed more threat than promise.
Flo, on the other hand, was short, round, almost elfin in appearance. Her muddy brown hair and thick
accent gave me the impression of a German ancestry, but I never was sure. And, in contrast to Eb, for whom
the word "taciturn" had been invented, Flo was a nonstop talker, her eyes always flashing brightly with the
excitement of the latest gossip.
I first hired Eb to fix the barnyard fence a few days after we moved in. I quickly discovered that he
was not one to rush things -- it took him three days to do the work I could have done in one day. Still, he only
demanded twenty dollars a day -- no more, no less -- so I was glad for the assistance, and he soon became a permanent fixture on the farm.
As for the quality of Eb's work, it was, well, adequate. He generally did OK, but sometimes he was
just plain out to lunch, like the time he put hinges on both sides of the toolshed door. It's not that he was dumb
or anything, it's just that he couldn't think and chew at the same time, and I rarely saw him without a wad the
size of a golf ball.
Thus it was with some trepidation that I hired Eb to paint several rooms in the house. We made it clear
that he was to carry a coffee can with him at all times and target it as accurately as possible. And, after he
several times picked the wrong target, causing dark brown stains in the pale yellow paint, Sara took to tying a large red ribbon around Eb's special can.
One afternoon we were finishing up in what was to become the family room. The planks and
sawhorses that had been used to reach the ceiling were shoved into the middle of the room. On one end of one
plank Eb had placed his coffee can, and right next to it an open can of brown paint he was using to paint the
chair rail. Since the two sawhorses supporting the plank had been shoved together, this produced an unbalanced
situation, with the plank teetering precipitously, getting worse with each "ptui!". To counter this threat without
touching Eb's cans, I casually placed an unopened gallon of wall paint on the other end of the plank, pretending
to move it out of the way before moving furniture back into the room.
(Note: What happened next has only been reconstructed after studious application of the techniques of
forensic science and extensive computer simulation.)
I was entering the room carrying a large wingback armchair, struggling to make it through the doorway
without contacting the fresh paint. It was at this moment that Eb chose to let loose with a large shot of brown
fluid, arcing it neatly across the room into the coffee can. The can spun like a top from the impact, wobbling
toward the edge of the plank. For a while it teetered on the edge but then it fell, trailing the red ribbon behind.
Somehow the ribbon caught in a crack in the plank, and so the coffee can hung suspended by the ribbon, though,
alas, upside down. A wave of brown fluid rushed across the hardwood floor, coming underfoot just as I took a step. I suddenly found myself skating across the floor while carrying a wingback chair.
Without the coffee can to balance it, the plank was suddenly unbalanced in the other direction and the
end holding the brown paint rose in a graceful arc. The empty coffee can, on its tether, also rose in a more
rapid arc, and the two cans simultaneously took flight. The brown paint created an amazingly straight stripe
across the ceiling and down one wall, with the can finally coming to rest on my wife's antique end table in the
corner of the room. The coffee can took an entirely different trajectory and flew neatly through the center of the
newly installed picture window.
About this time the teetering plank hit bottom, and the can of wall paint slid off. This caused the plank
to rebound and totter in the opposite direction. The plank now made a nice ramp which I encountered as I
skidded across the floor under the weight of the wing chair. I fell forward onto the plank, pushing the chair
ahead of me. This of course caused the plank to teeter back again, and the chair and I now slid downward
toward the can of wall paint. The impact of the two of us sent the paint can spinning violently. The lid flew off
and narrow stripes of yellow suddenly appeared on the brown wainscoting. Eventually the can overturned, and
the yellow and brown fluids mingled on the hardwood floor.
I came to rest on my stomach on the back of the upturned chair. As I rolled over and sat on the floor,
brown paint from the ceiling dripped on my head while mingled brown and yellow oozed across my shoes and
pants. I struggled to get up, but my feet kept slipping from under me, so I just set there and caught my breath.
On the other side of the room stood Eb. There wasn't a drop of paint on him. He was motionless for a minute, then began chewing slowly on his cud. He said nothing and displayed neither displeasure nor surprise --
it was as if this sort of thing occurred daily. Then, from the corner of the room, a paint-splattered cuckoo clock
sounded: "Cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo." Five o'clock. Eb sat down his paintbrush, picked up his
lunch pail by the door, said "Well, see ya tamarra then" and walked out.
happy?
maybe i can be the first person to reply to the above post.
and now we should shut this thread down before its too late.
just what are you planning on doing with my story...
need an addy to send the royalties check to???
Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming
WOW!!! What a Ride!
Forget the primal scream, just ROAR!!!
Some years ago I was working for a contractor that was hired to build a video store in a commercial space. The foreman, and I use the term lightly, knew less abought construction than the new guy on TOH.
First thing he did on that job was take the leftover levelastic and pour it down the toilet. Guess what, that stuff cures under water.
The job is getting close to being done and he goes and buys steel cable and hardware to support the shelf the video monitors will be on. The shelf gets installed, and the four brand new 19" monitors go up. One hour latter the little S hooks turn into little j hooks and the shelf tips and the monitors go crashing to the ground.