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Indisputably my worst painting blunder ever!

All Posts, Personal

It’s a two-fer week for me in the blunder department.  First I had to take a cabinet apart and rebuild it, that wasn’t too bad.

This  one… this one was pretty BAD!
Painting blunder

 

You should know that I mix my paint by holding it up and shaking the heck out of it.

Now the story goes like this:  I shook my paint.  I loosened by lid.  I answered a phone call…  20 minutes later I went back to my project and forgot that I’d loosened my lid.  I thought, “It’s been a while, I should probably shake this a bit more — for good measure.”

I’m sure you can guess the rest.

I didn’t even cry.  (I just wiped my face.)

Painting blunder

 

I took off my sweatshirt and used the floor as my paint tray (because I had spilled a LOT and wasn’t about to waste my $50/gallon paint by just cleaning it up) and finished painting my cabinets.

Painting blunder

 

Then I danced!  Because what else is there to do when you spill a half a gallon of paint of the floor?

Painting blunder

 

I kept my Chucks but threw the rest of my clothes away.

Painting blunder

 

They weren’t my favorites anyway.

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Comments

  1. Heh. I did this once with a jar of spaghetti sauce. But I didn’t have to throw away my clothes. YIKES!
    Glad to see you can laugh about it – much better reaction than any of the alternatives!
    Breida

    • Oh my. I’m sure I’ve done it with spaghetti sauce too. LOL The paint was soaked through to my skin and I don’t like to wash that much paint down the drain and if I just let it dry and then wore them…they’d be stiff as a board. I was just complaining about how those jeans didn’t have any stretch anyway so I really wasn’t too disappointed. Though, I generally don’t throw away clothes over donating them — unless they are useless to anyone because they are covered in paint. Where am I going with this? Rambling… 🙂

  2. Maybe this would have been a time for ‘stirred, not shaken’ instead of ‘shaken, not stirred’? lol Poor thing. At least the cabinets got painted…now getting the paint out of that grout…YIKES!

  3. We did this once… I say “we” because hubby prefers to stir the paint, so while I waited for him to return to the kitchen to stir the can, I opened it to view the beautiful color, then set the lid back on top. I had a phone call and he returned to the kitchen and picked up the can…and then I heard lots of bad words! Of course, it was all my fault, but I asked him why he picked it up from the center of newspapers, etc. It’s one for the books. We didn’t get any painting done that night.

    • OH my! I can only imagine the atmosphere that would have been created if someone else had loosened the lid and I hadn’t known… I’m glad I can only blame myself. We have to have these stories to tell our grandkids in 50 years anyway. Unless we forget, which is highly likely in my case — which is why I document them all! LOL

  4. I’m taking a break from painting right now. Hope you didn’t jinx me. lol j..k.. I did the same thing once. The cleanup aint fun. Glad you can laugh about it though. 🙂 Hope the rest of the day goes better.

    • LOL Nancy. I hope you got back from your painting break and all went well! If not, please send me some pictures! 🙂

  5. We just had our lower level bath redone. It was suggested that we put cardboard on the floor when painting (did most before the floor went in) so if we spilled some it wouldn’t get into the grout. We were told that was impossible to get out. What is your plan?? I would love a post to show how you remedy this problem, as I’m sure many have had this happen and just cry, cry, cry. You rock Sandra–even more than before–love your atttitude.

    • I’m still in the “ignore it for now and figure it out later” stage of this accident. I will definitely let you know what I do. LOL Good on you for laying cardboard. I need to stop being so lazy and do that…although, it would have soaked through in this case. Cardboard can only do SO much. It’s just one of those things. Honestly, I’m just glad it was my own home and not a client. I’m sure I woulda’ been fired! LOL

    • It’s in the trash. It would have been too stiff to wear with THAT much paint on it. I’m still washing it off my skin because it soaked clear through. LOL

  7. I think we have all been there….glad you can laugh about it! I’m usually the one who steps into the paint tray!

  9. Have you ever stepped off a ladder into a bucket of paint? Back in my decorative painting days, I was working on a parchment finish with my partner and backed off the ladder right into a 5 gallon bucket.! And in THOSE days, we worked with alkyd paint and thinner to make our glaze – no way to salvage my shoe or sock. I stood there holding my foot up over the bucket, dripping glaze, laughing so hard because I didn’t know what to do! How to get out of the customer’s living room without making a mess – involved wrapping my foot in a spare tarp and a lot of hopping.

    • Best- story -ever! I have the best visual in my mind of you hopping out of the house, wrapped in a tarp.

      It’s amazing to hear just how many people have done similar things. We are only human after all. 🙂

  10. The Grout!! The Grout!! Save the Grout!! I have to admit, that was my first thought. Lesson learned: Never, Never, NEVER answer the stupid telephone when in ANY phase of a painting project! So sorry this happened to you.

    • I keep telling Wes it is HIS fault because he called me. LOL I’ll figure something out.

  11. 🙁
    Thanks for the dance, though 🙂 sort of, kinda, made everything all better!
    Here’s to hoping tomorrow will be better

  12. Love the look! Loved the pics. You are so talented that its nice to see that you make an oops once in a while!!! I enjoy your blog. Did you think of painting the floor white? You were halfway there!!! Lol

    • I always intended on painting the grout. But not the tile and not with high gloss white paint. Now I’m not sure what I’m going to do. I’m dancing on it.

  13. I have done that once or twice myself, sans the dancing! Hope you were able to get the grout clean! I dropped a whole gallon of oil-based primer on my downstairs bathroom tile floor years ago. I never got it all out of the grout.

    • I think we’ll have to scrape the grout. I’ll let you know how that goes. Maybe you’ll be able to get the last bits out of your grout too. LOL

  14. so sorry but glad you were able to laugh about it. I must confess I very likely would have cried and laughed. Best of all was the way you were able to salvage the paint. Here is to a better next week.

    • I have to confess something too, I’ve always hated that floor. Not the tile — but that tile with that grout. I HATE it. I always intended to paint the grout with a light brown. Not exactly sure what my next move is now but I’ll figure it out.

  15. I like the part that you used the paint right off the floor. Last weekend I was helping my son stain his fireplace mantel we had just finished, he spilled the stain all over the floor and we just dipped our rags in the mess and kept on going.

    • Ha, nice! What else are you going to do? The damage has already been done. I figured I might as well at least use the paint and not waste a half gallon of paint on top of creating so much more work for myself. It made me feel better about the whole thing. LOL

  17. This is the kind of thing that I would do. I don’t usually paint walls because I am the type that would get the paint in my hair and also step in the bucket. I guess I should put that on my Mighty List. Learn how to paint a room without messing up. Ann

    • ROFL. You made my day Ann!
      -Bucket list item #210: learn not to shake paint all over my floors!

  18. Haha!!!! Gotta admit… I couldn’t stop laughing as I read your post. The hubby asked what I was laughing at and I said, “Just reading a blog… She pulled a ME!!!” That is so totally something I’d do!! 😉

  19. There must be something in the air – I spilled a can of paint on my carpet the other day. I had finished a mural & was just doing a few final touch-ups. I spent the rest of the afternoon trying to clean it up – and crying. Sadly, I was too panicked to snap a picture. Would’ve made a great post, but you already know that 🙂

  20. Love the positive reaction. I didn’t have such a great reaction. I’ve spilled a quart of paint on carpet in two different houses. Ugh! The first one I freaked because it was relatively new carpet. So I called a carpet guy and he told me what to do. LOTS AND LOTS OF WATER. It worked. Second time I knew what to do. Joy. LOL

    • I’m wishing I would have used lots of water now. At the time, I was thinking I would just scrape it later…but it’s not scraping off so easily.
      Another post for another day…

  21. Same thing happened to me last october, only thing it wasn´t paint was primer. So I had to call a pro for a scraping-cleaning floor. Not cheap at all. A waste of time, and a waste of money.

    • Ouch! I think I’m just going to tear out the tile. (And I promise I didn’t plan this whole incident for that purpose. LOL)

    • Ha. I have plenty of paint stir sticks. I just prefer to shake. And I’m still shakin’. I just make sure the lid is secure first. 🙂

  23. Oh, yikes! Makes my painting issues look a bit better! Thanks for sharing, it helps give me confidence when the “pros” share their mistakes!

    • Oh my. We all have our moments. I like it when my moments aren’t quite so damaging…but what can I say? Win some you lose some. B-)

  24. My husband knocked off a gal of Chocolate brown paint off the top of a ladder. Talk about a huge mess!!! From his head to his feet and everything around him. Thank GOD we had covered the bamboo floors with a tarp – first time we’ve ever used a tarp. 🙂

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