One Friday in September, I was getting Nora and Evie ready for school when I smelled a faint smoke smell in the kitchen. I asked the girls if anyone had tried to make toast, or knew where that smell was coming from. Nora said that you could smell it better downstairs. I raced downstairs and investigated. The furnace room had no smell, and neither did the family room, office, hallway or bedrooms. When I went into the downstairs bathroom, the smell was very, very strong. I could not figure out what was causing the smell, so I turned off the circuit breaker to the area, and prayed that our house would not burn down while I quickly ran the girls to school. When I got back, things were still the same. Strong smoke smell in the bathroom, but no obvious signs of where it could be coming from.
I called the fire department non-emergency number and asked them what I should do, and they said that anytime you smell smoke and can't tell where it is coming from you should call 911. They sent out an ambulance and a firetruck, with 5 or 6 firefighters in full gear, and they checked out every room in the house, and around the outside of the house. Sam was very excited about having our house full of cool firefighters. They used their heat-detecting equipment, but were unable to determine the source. They said that the smell in the bathroom was definitely a strong smoke smell, but that their equipment was unable to pick anything up. They thought it smelled like an electrical fire, and told me to call an electrician to come check it out ASAP, then they left.
After a couple of calls, I found an electric company that could send someone to our house in the early afternoon. Two electricians arrived, and after explaining the events of our morning, they got to work seeing if they could figure out what was going on. The smoke smell was still very strong. After checking all the light fixtures and the fan, they asked if they could cut a hole in the ceiling to investigate further since the smell was stronger up there. They did that, and when they were looking up in the ceiling, one of the electricians ran out to their van to get some more equipment. While he was out there, I heard the other electrician burst out laughing, and yell "I found it!!" I went downstairs to see what he had found, and it ended up being one of Evie's socks that had been thrown into one of the wall-mounted sconces in the basement hallway. It was weird because there wasn't really a smell in the hallway, but the smell in the bathroom was really strong. They thought that the reason for that was the air intake in the ceiling was above the sconce, and was probably transferring the smell. He said it was good that we turned off the circuit breaker when we did, because if the light had been left it could have caused a fire.
When I asked Evie if she had thrown a sock in there, she said "Uh huh!". Apparently she had done it earlier that morning while she and Nora were messing around, before the girls had come upstairs for breakfast. Ugh! I'm just glad that everything turned out ok. We also had a serious discussion with the kids about fire safety!
The infamous sock
The wall sconce it was thrown into
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