I woke up from an afternoon nap today to find the kitchen flooded! Apparently, I had a blockage in the sink, and somehow, the water had slowly risen and overflowed on to the floor, through the floorboards, to appear out of my downstairs neighbour's ceiling! I woke up to their frantic knocking! After an afternoon of cleaning up the dirty water and old rotting grease which the plumbers had managed to free, I'm exhausted. I'm just thankful I was here to deal with it. If this had happened while I was away, it could have caused far more damage. I don't think my neighbour is a big fan of mine today! Poor thing. So, what was you last household mishap, and how did you cope? The upside to my case was two young, very handsome and jovial plumbers came over immediately, and had the job done and dusted in about 15 mins - laughing and making light of it all the way. It's not very often I get to say this about workmen, but they were just WONDERFUL. They even cleaned up after themselves as best they could with kitchen towels.
I accidentally locked myself in my own bedroom when my parents last visited, last month. It's something I often do for no particular reason (no, not even that) as I have my own key to my bedroom, but for some reason I didn't have it with me this time. I found a similar-looking key on a master key-chain which I keep in my bedroom, which, for some bizarre reason, could lock my door but couldn't unlock it. Bizarrely, despite being trapped within what is for all intents and purposes a box room with a bed and a shirt rack, and facing the prospect of not being able to eat, drink, go to work, wash, or see any form of human contact for the rest of my life, I was the most calm I'd ever been in my life. My parents were worried, however, but fortunately there was a key on that chain that did lock and unlock my door. Needless to say, I used it to get out. As it turned out, I found the original bedroom door key in the end. And, in case this sort of thing would happen again (which I'm certain it will) I have a telephone in the room now.
I was in the final stage of re-doing my kitchen (out with the old and in with something new) -actually I still am- and had put up a new shelve (stainless steel in stead of wood) where the old one had been -even using the same holes in the wall. A night, shortly after, a loud noise woke me up. Yes the shelve wasn't attached to the wall in both ends and everything that had been on it was on the floor; luckily only an empty glass jar had broken so I decided to go back to bed and take care of the mess of broken glass in the morning. My own fault; I shouldn't have let somebody else take down the old shelve! -they also pulled the Rawl-plugs out of the holes you see! -well half of them anyway- and I didn't notice while putting up the new shelve as the holes had been filled. I put the liquor bottles somewhere else after that.
June 27, 2008. A storm - appeared to be a cross between a hurricane, a tornado, and the fifth season of Earth: Final Conflict - hit here. It only lasted for a few minutes, but it blew down almost half the trees in the city. Some of which were in my own yard. The tree in my back yard fell down across power lines, and the one in the front yard hit my house, causing some damage. My power was out for four days. Because of the falling trees, there were holes ripped in my front and back lawn (had to replace the whole thing) and my cable line got yanked off the house and tossed about (it took two more days, after I got power back, to get cable TV, phone and internet reconnected). I was lucky, though. Other homes were completely destroyed. Some people even died.
I once accidently locked myself in my neighbor's basement with their teenage daughter I was attracted to. The door aparently locked on its own when closed and I didn't know it when I let the door close. So we were stuck down there, bonding, and in order to keep warm we had to don giant chimpmunk costumes. Anyway, the family returned sometime the next morning and it turns out the door didn't lock itself when closed it was just tricky.
When I was 18, I was preparing to go visit my grandparents with my brothers and parents. The afternoon before we left, I decided to wash Dad's car and vacuum it out. Went out, started the car, and went to back out of the garage. Being that i was only moving it into the drive, I left the seatbelt off. It was hanging out the door and preventing the door from closing all the way. The car was sluggish and acting like it was going to stall, so I gave it about half the throttle. Then I noticed the little red "brake" light on. I instinctively pulled on the brake release, forgetting that the car was in reverse and I had the throttle halfway to the floor. I managed to catch the track for the garage door opener with the door as it swung open....$150 in damage to the garage door and $800 to the car to straighten the front fender and replace the door...
If there were cameras, lights and you were in the valley, you totally would've fucked. And I would own the DVD called "Chipfuck Love!"
Not exactly "household", but once when I was in Cub Scouts, our den was having a meeting in an upstairs room at the local Unitarian church, and the door handle fell off the door. It wasn't locked, but we couldn't get the thing open from the inside. That was interesting. Eventually someone thought to shout out the window to someone in the parking lot to come let us out.
Last year, I couldn't get in my bathroom all weekend because the doorknob wouldn't budge (it wasn't locked). No need to say more.
Nothing horrible, thank heavens, in spite of a few hurricanes. I did trip somehow once coming in from the garage. I have NO idea how I did it. I flailed about wildly, trying to stop the fall as I have spinal issues and falling = bad. My hand reached onto something. Ah! Except - As I fell onto the floor, the kitchen garbage can that I had grabbed to save myself toppled over, and disgorged its smelly mess onto me. It was funny, in spite of the pain from the fall. Talk about adding insult to injury!
Glad your house is back in order. Last house-related problem was the boiler fan deciding to give out a few weeks ago. Due to various delays, I had to spend a week surviving on the immersion heater and with a one-room fan heater. Not fun. But that was fairly tolerable really. The last REALLY annoying one was the en-suite flooding last August after a pipe broke. Emergency plumbers actually made the problem worse. My usual plumbers fixed it properly a couple of days later. But the water soaked through to the floorboards and worse, via the floorboards across a wall and up into the living room carpet, which needed to dry out over a couple of weeks or so. That was seriously annoying.
^ Did your insurance cover any of it or did you have to pay for it all? Here, most insurance companies won't pay for ANY water damage. Period.