If you think YOUR evening went bad....

Pilgrim · December 29, 2009, 07:16:45 PM

I was heading down the stairs to the basement to store a gallon of bright red/pink paint in the storage room...and accidentally bumped the can against the door jamb. The impact knocked the lid loose and sprayed paint all the way down a dozen carpeted stairs - plus the walls.

We spent the next hour scooping up the paint, then soaking the paint with water/oxyclean solution and blotting - but we can't get the worst three stairs clean. The carpet was beige and the red paint was basically Paint Of Death for that carpet.

Tomorrow we'll assess. I've already considered removing the carpet and going to natural wood. The house was built in 1968 - I pulled back a corner of the carpet at the top and the stairs are painted an especially repulsive 60's green, and there's adhesive on them as well from a previous carpet installation. Stripping them and going to natural wood might be a multi-day project. Not something that interests me a lot.

I guess we'll see what our carpet options are.

FORTUNATELY - I have a fridge full of cold beer.

lowend1 · December 29, 2009, 07:21:34 PM

What the hell were you painting bright red/pink?

TBird1958 · December 29, 2009, 07:34:06 PM

And I thought I knew how to have a good time...........

OldManC · December 29, 2009, 07:49:49 PM

Quote from: Pilgrim on December 29, 2009, 07:16:45 PM
FORTUNATELY - I have a fridge full of cold beer.

As crappy as that had to have been, I'm glad to see you've been able to keep your sense of humor intact. Good luck on getting it sorted!

Pilgrim · December 29, 2009, 07:57:18 PM

I have a positive report!

After ingesting one cold Shiner Bock, I decided I wasn't done. I broke out the Shop-Vac and made a fresh bucket of water/Oxyclean. With my wife keeping the shop-vac from running down the stairs and taking me out, I repeatedly soaked the whee out of the remaining paint spots, massaged the carpet vigorously, then used the shop-vac to remove the water running around.

DAMN! That's what it took - about 8 gallons of water to flush out the paint, and the shop-vac to pull it back out. IT WORKED. After another 40 minutes of mad sloshing, massaging and vacuuming, I think we can live with the result. I am frankly quite amazed...but using gallons of water and sucking it up immediately was the trick. I suspect the Oxyclean helped - I picked up that idea from a frantic check of websites before we attacked the paint.

Blotting the runoff sucks. Blotting is for weaklings. Use a manly shop-vac!! That thing just paid for itself!

And there is still cold beer. Now I can have a smoked turkey sammich - from the turkey I smoked on Christmas Day.

Gentlemen, my evening is starting to improve.

chromium · December 29, 2009, 08:16:40 PM

Glad its coming out.

If you have any trouble spots, you might check around for something called "white spirit" or "Stoddard solvent". I used to do auto upholstery as a side job in my college v1.0 days, and I used that stuff to remove Weldwood contact adhesive and paint overspray, and other nasty stuff from carpet and upholstery. I imagine it would do the job on latex paint too, and it leaves the fabric/carpet looking spankin' new.

Good luck! Always good to have beer onhand

Dave W · December 29, 2009, 11:48:18 PM

Oxyclean and Shiner Bock. What a combo.

Freuds_Cat · December 30, 2009, 12:36:08 AM

Al, you are supposed to paint the Town red mate! not the stairway

Nice to hear you didnt have to waste too much beer on the job.

Rhythm N. Bliss · December 30, 2009, 12:44:18 AM

Sounds pretty bad but not as bad as all of us here in Huntington grieving over the death of Jimmy "The Rev" Sullivan, the badass Double Bass Drummer of Avenged Sevenfold who died today of a drug overdose.
We had talked about jamming but now we never will.

Iome · December 30, 2009, 01:37:18 AM

Yeah, the beer is ok....but i donno if i'd smoke a turkey.....i hope you throw the weed in the back and pufs from it's beak

altrough you might get higher the other way round....

Barklessdog · December 30, 2009, 05:40:36 AM

Glad things seemed to have worked out. Bright Pink aye?
Like a Pepto Bismal bomb.

I had a nasty old neighbor who used to scrub his drive way every couple of months with detergent. I was painting the house which was right next to their drive way. Of coarse I spilled a gallon of oil based white paint on it. I thought I would have killed him right there. Surprisingly he was pretty cool about it and he insisted on cleaning it up (probably so I did not make it worse).

When we first got our dog my son did this big paint by number oil painting. The dog jumped on the painting, then jumped on the white couch, brand new white carpeting and ran all over the house. Surprisingly it came out with paint thinner.

Lightyear · December 30, 2009, 07:20:47 PM

Well at least you got a cold beer ( excellent choice BTW ) and a turkey sammich

Lets see: I took several days off to start on the bookshelves for my wife's library - I just love to work on my vacation

Long story short I pretty much have an entire wall worth of oak book shleves ready to install - did I mentioned the freakin' walls are 11 feet tall?!

But in the process - I knocked my $275 plunge router off my bench and it took it out of commision - $35 worth of parts - ordered. My Finish nailer bit the big one and now needs a driver kit - parts not ordered. And my trusty variable speed Bosch random orbit sander stripped out the pad mounting threads in motor

Parts probably will cost more than a new Bosch sander

I tried telling my wife that God doesn't want her to have 2000 books, hence all of my broken tools, and that maybe she just ought to order one of those electronic Kindle things that Amazon sells

Some things you just do not say around a librarian

So: Broken tools, cranky wife and I burnt my Christmas $$ that mom always gives me buying a new router and no beer!

Pilgrim · December 30, 2009, 08:09:27 PM

Sorry about that, Lightyear! Perhaps the no-beer situation can be remedied....

Today I went back and used nearly a quart of Goof-Off on the stair carpet - got more of the remaining reddish tint out. Of course, I've spent the rest of the day breathing fumes....it's been 32 degrees outside and the house is closed up.

If you hear of some idiot in Fort Collins getting a free ride to the moon, it means the fumes from the evaporating Goof-Off found a spark. But at least the stairs are looking livable.

jmcgliss · December 30, 2009, 09:32:01 PM

More unintended consequences: I volunteered to work three days before Christmas at a friend's company installing new warehouse shelving and helping with year-end crunch. The last hour of day two I cut my hand open and the bleeding was more than I wanted to see. Got stitched up at an ER ten minutes for the company. At least I got to use the third day for errands wrapping presents.

Lightyear · December 31, 2009, 05:20:32 PM

Quote from: jmcgliss on December 30, 2009, 09:32:01 PM
More unintended consequences: I volunteered to work three days before Christmas at a friend's company installing new warehouse shelving and helping with year-end crunch. The last hour of day two I cut my hand open and the bleeding was more than I wanted to see. Got stitched up at an ER ten minutes for the company. At least I got to use the third day for errands wrapping presents.

I'll take the broken toys and no beer - thankyouverymuch!

I just don't get along well with the sight of blood - most especially mine

Hope your hand is OK and that you got a Snoopy bandaide at the ER