The day was January 30th, 2008. I was running around the house being a clean freak. This happens only once in a blue moon– I go on a rampage between scrubbing every surface, doing the laundry, taking trash out, mopping, and other various methods of cleaning. So fascinating, I know.

It was time to soak the tub and clean that grime that may or may not have been there. (We are are normal people with grimy tubs. right?) I filled the tub with hot water and swooshed around some bathtub cleansing potions… I left the bathroom and went down to the basement to fetch the sheets from the dryer. On my way back up from the basement I noticed some strange water presence on the main level and stood there scratching my head because I could not figure out where the hell this was coming from. I heard dripping, saw water splattering on the floor, and still- was totally baffled… and then I looked up to see my ceiling throwing up buckets of water at a time. Yes.

I didn’t know what to do. I ran around gathering every single towel in the house to sop up the mess, but there weren’t enough sham wows in the universe to clean this one up. I quickly ran down to the basement and brought up a huge tupperware tub to catch the water.

What happened? Somewhere along the way, the builders seemed to have forgotten to attach the overflow drain to anything. aka, any water that was more than the tub wanted, which usually splish splashes into a little drain and then goes down a pipe, was just spilling into the ceiling below the bathroom, aka my kitchen and dining room. In addition, when the tub was installed, it was simply placed in its nook without being secured in any way shape or form other than the caucking around the edges (and the floorboards upon which it sits). This means the tub wiggles and moves with pressure and temperature change, allowing water to seep in around the edges where the caulking is constantly separating. Stay with me, folks.

The result: A huge hole in our ceiling, which is still here over 1 year later because the problem still has yet to be fixed and we don’t want to close it up until it is properly addressed.

Why we haven’t: a bit of laziness, a bit of hating to spend our money on other people’s mistakes, a bit of not wanting to deal with it. at all.

The fix: We decided that … errr.. I decided that it would be nice to cover this reminder of catastrophe up during the holidays… I decided to do so with a little inspiration from the wonderful Jennifer of Sis Boom who had recently gifted me with a huge tissue paper pom pom. What could be better than masking this holy region with vibrant color and a wow factor.

Jordan and I built these enormous tissue paper pom poms, modeled after Jennifer’s, and then hung them up with some wire.

The result: Nobody actually ever noticed the hole in our ceiling until I decided to decorate it. Instead of hiding anything, these colorful orbs drew massive amounts of attention to the ceiling and forced everyone to ask us what was with the huge hole. Lucky for you, you already know the story.

I think we are going to actually be taking care of it soon, but I figured that the special hole deserved some sort of a tribute on OMG since it has been smiling at me like this for just shy of one year now. In a strange way I have become attached to it.

THE DAY THE SKY FELL

TODAY