Ben Krasner's Website

Accidents Happen During Home Improvement

As part of a seemingly never-ending list of related home improvement tasks, I was up in my attic searching for air leaks that might need sealing.   I found plenty of such leaks where heated air from my living levels was escaping into my attic and therefore keeping my attic too warm – thereby heating my roof which is leading to significant ice damming conditions.  While focusing around my upstairs bathroom (which is also allowing moisture to escape into my attic – always a bonus) I had identified what I felt was plenty of work sealing up gaps and drafts that I could do to improve the situation.  Little did I know I was about to give myself some extra work and learning experience.

Just before I could leave the attic for the night, I created more work for myself

I pivoted to walk back in the direction I had come and placed my hand on a support beam so that I wouldn’t truly be on one foot in the attic, for fear of risking being off-balance and damaging the ceiling below me.  In actuality this became a huge mistake as the support beam pulled right out from the ridge beam of the roof as if it hadn’t been attached at all, therefore leaving me on just one foot regardless of my efforts.  Now I am drastically off balance and somewhat shocked that this beam is now falling towards me because I had no real grip on it, either.  I grab the beam and of course realize that it’s not going to help me secure my position, so I quickly take a stab with my foot into insulation and pray I feel a stud.  With no stud to be felt, I took another shot at getting my foot back on solid structure by heading towards one of the OSB boards I was using to travel in the attic – and I hit it.  The problem: these boards were not yet screwed or nailed down as I thought I would be traveling much farther out into the attic space.  Consequently, the weight I put on the board just tipped it over and into the cavity between two rafters, where my foot immediately went through the ceiling and I was knee-deep into my living area before I could pull myself back out.

Natalie was almost asleep at this time – she was in the bedroom just moments away from fast-forwarding about 8 hours – when she heard the awful crash and subsequent cussing-at-nobody-but-myself coming from the attic.  Obviously, she was … upset… okay she was drastically more than upset…  and was verbalizing to me how much she felt this was going to cost us.  I told her to relax, that I would fix it, that I wanted to learn how to do drywall anyway and that from what I’ve seen it wasn’t that hard.  Of course, I knew nothing of what I was talking about, but I was determined to fix my mistake on my own.

Now it is up to me to learn how to drywall to patch a fairly sizable hole that is irregular in shape and on a ceiling that is textured just to make me go that one step further.  I was planning on doing some drywall work in order to learn on the topic, this summer.  Obviously, this task has been given a higher priority and I will be involved with drywall much earlier than expected.

Look for a follow-up or two… or three… on how I fix it.  I might even make it a step-by-step instruction guide in case any of you out there run into the same kind of scenario.

Take care!