Mom, the Light is Dripping

Those are not words you want to hear pulling you out of the snuggly arms of your spouse. "What?" I demanded as I dragged myself up the stairs. "The light is dripping. I can't explain it. You just have to come see it." The last time I saw anything dripping from a ceiling inside a building was in a hotel room in London during a rainstorm 18 years ago. We noticed water dripping down the walls of the bathroom in our hotel room. Within ten minutes a three-foot section of ceiling, sand, and water crashed down onto one of the twin beds in the room. All the desk clerk could say as I was reporting the situation to her was, "Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh" (I remember being particularly struck at the time that she was saying "gosh" instead of "G--").

With London ceiling memories niggling at my thoughts, I was not thrilled with the report. Sure enough, the front hall light fixture was holding water and dripping onto the floor through the screw in the center bottom of the fixture. The kids and I quickly realized that Liam was in the kids' bathroom right above the leak. Bronwyn raced upstairs and began exclaiming, "Oh my gosh!!" before the rest of us got up there. Contrary to instructions to take a five-minute SHOWER, Liam had filled the tub up nearly as full as it could be and had been splashing water all over the floor of the bathroom. Since my children can't seem to keep their clothes out of the bathroom, multiple articles of clothing were sopping wet and the water was washing out of the bathroom, across the end of the tile, and soaking the carpet in the hallway. Liam got the tub draining amid angry noises from Mom, while Bronwyn and Evan began rounding up every old towel we could find. We soaked several bath towels and multiple hand towels, laying them down on the floor and treading on them to soak up water from the carpet. Liam tearfully tried to wring out dripping clothing into the draining tub. By the time we got most of the water up and pulled from the carpet, we had filled up a large laundry basket with soggy clothes and towels.

I called my neighbor who is experienced in all things electrical to ask him what to do about the light fixture. I didn't dare touch it, knowing that water and electricity don't mix. He came to look at it and, wearing special gloves, took the fixture off the ceiling. There were probably two cups of water that came out of the bowl of the fixture and the insulation in the top of the fixture. Fortunately, there doesn't seem to be any damage to the drywall in the ceiling, seeing as how the water had a place to drip out of instead of pooling on the drywall ceiling after dripping through the floor above.

We put a box fan blowing on the carpet all night and today it seems mostly dry, although the carpet is discolored. Liam may be taking future baths by being soaked with the hose in the backyard.