Fortunately ours did Saturday night.
Background: I am replacing the wall oven and built in microwave in the kitchen with new combo micro-wave convection oven. The project involves the demolition of the existing built-in two shelf cabinet, rebuilding a single shelf cabinet with a lower drawer, and crafting the cabinetry/facade that the oven fits into. I had completed the demolition and gone to Home Depot and purchased everything I needed to rebuild the cabinet.
We have had a 3-foot tall wooden candle holder that sat on the floor in our toilet room in the master bath. My wife likes to light all the candles in the house on occasion to "freshen" up things a bit. I do admit it does add a nice touch.
Saturday morning she lit them all. The candle on the tall holder in the toilet room was a 3 inch diameter type, maybe 8 inches tall new.
Saturday evening, just after dinner, I'm sitting on the downstairs couch watching football. My wife and daughter are upstairs watching football. There was a commercial on where a female prisoner was handcuffed to an airline seat next to the marshal in charge of her. Right as she broke free of the handcuffs and began running down the aisle our fire alarm goes off. It was the split second the female broke free so my first thoughts were "There were alarms on the plane, loud ones, they sound an awful lot like our fire alarms. Damn they are loud for a commercial, where is the remote? Nope, wrong remote. Here it is. Mute." But the alarms continued. Hmmm... I wonder what made the smoke alarm go off. My wife and daughter are thinking I was working on the cabinetry and screwed up something electrical so they just remain upstairs annoyed at the noise. Then I see the glow through our bedroom door and remember my wife had some candles lit....from 10 hours before.
I casually walk into the bathroom and the glow coming from the toilet room was really bright. Not good. I round the corner and see what looked like the pillar of fire God used to lead the Jews into the wilderness. The flames went from the floor (tile luckily, not carpet) up about 5 1/2 feet and was about 2 feet in diameter. I thought about running to the garage to get the fire extinguisher we have had out there for over 20 years, "but what if it no longer works, and the fire would burn at least an additional 60 seconds while I go get it". So I grabbed my bath towel hanging next to the shower. "I will smother it". Unfortunately the towel was not long enough to cover the entire candle stick down to the floor so the pool of burning melted wax on the floor kept burning until the towel actual caught fire. "Crap!". I threw the towel into the tub and turned on the water until is was out and sufficiently soaking wet. Returning to the fire I successfully smothered it with the wet towel.
The only casualties were the candle holder and my bath towel. The wall paper just had a waxy smoke film which cleaned up with some Windex. With a paint scrapper I was able to clean up all the melted wax on the tile floor. The light switch plate needed a good cleaning as well. Thankfully I had a large 36 inch warehouse fan to set in the window to blow out the smoke.
I hate to think what might had happened if instead of watching football I had gone out to the garage after dinner to begin cutting the wood for the new cabinet, as planned. Procrastination paid off in this instance.
Oh, and I'm getting a new fire extinguisher, maybe a few, next trip to Home Depot.
