messes

He’d just arrived home from work and walked in the door to find me sitting on the kitchen counter surrounded by chunks of cork, a blow dryer in one hand and a putty knife in the other. I was in project mode, but not the constructive kind.

Him: What’s going on?

Me: I hot glued the wrong kind of cork board to the inside of this cabinet and when I tried to rip it back off not all of it came off and the only way to remove the glue now is to heat it with a blow dryer and scrape it off, which is taking FOREVER, and my arm is about to fall off too and why oh why did I use so much glue??

Him: … There’s a wrong kind of cork board?

Me: Yes. But that doesn’t really matter anymore. I made a mess. See?

Okay, so not all projects go as planned. Or sometimes I have a bright idea that turns out to be not so great after all.

Five years ago I painted our bedroom blue. Which was fine, except that I decided to “texture” the walls while I was at it. Believe me, I’d love to go back a few years and ask my former self what I was thinking. I’m not convinced that “texture” is ever a good idea, but if it works in a space there is definitely a right and wrong way to go about getting it done. I’ll let you guess which way I did.

We lived with my “texture” disaster for five years until I finally sanded it all off and repainted the room. There was blue dust everywhere for a few days. Talk about a lesson learned.

And speaking of learning, last week I discovered you should never spray polyurethane in a garage with a car parked inside.

Yeah, I did that. And yeah, I saw that windshield covered in a haze of polyurethane particles and thought I was going to die. Fortunately it came of with a goo gone bath and a fierce scrubbing. I’ll live to make another mess. But I’ll never hot glue without double checking, texture without researching, or spray an aerosol can in an occupied garage again.