This morning, I made the biggest fucking mess I’ve ever made in my entire goddamn life.
Seriously, in nearly 31 extremely klutzy years, I have never made as big, sloppy, frustrating, or just plain awful mess as the mess I made today.
I fell off of a ladder and brought the remainder of a can of Kilz primer down with me. About a quart of paint went sailing across the room, after having taken a brief detour on the top of my head to start with. I was covered in paint literally from head to foot, and paint was slung across the room from doorway to the south wall (about 9′ away). The floor, two walls, the futon, and the ladder were well coated.
Disaster mitigation was the order of the day. I threw off my clothes and hustled them and my paint-drenched boots into the bathtub. I realized then that I’d put two big ol’ painty footprints on the bathmat, so I dumped my boots and the bathmat into the tub, too, and turned on the water. Then I started gathering rags and went back into the room to start limiting damage.Â
I swabbed up the worst of the paint with two old towls, and dumped them in the tub with the other painty stuff. Then I got another old towel wet and started wiping up paint off the floor, walls, futon, and ladder. I rinsed it out probably a dozen times to start with. Then I got another towel wet and started another course of wiping down of the futon. I got the frame largely de-painted, but the cover of the mattress is a total loss. I decided not to wast more time on it, because I was planning to make a new one anyway.Â
Then I went back to working on the floors. The primer had set on the walls very quickly. I was able to wipe down the worst of the splatters, but it left smudges. I have enough of the original wall paint that I can re-paint over the smudges without too much hassle. The floor however, was a much greater concern.Â
Joel and I had just recently re-done the floors in the kitchen, hallway, and back bedroom of his house. It was the bedroom where I had the spill. He did the brute-force sanding with this gigantic, antique belt sander owned by a friendly neighbor, and I did ever and ever so much edge sanding. Then we polyurethaned, and the floors look absofuckinglutely gorgeous. In no way was I going to take credit for ruining the floor in the back bedroom. For the next three hours, I swabbed, scrubbed, and scraped up spatters, smudges, flecks, and splats of paint from the floor and skirting boards. I scrubbed paint off the heat register. I picked paint out of the joints in the floor. And I swore, cussed, grumbled, and woed the day that I ever saw a bucket of Killz.
I’d been doing some touch-up painting in the back bedroom. I had JUST finished touching up the ceiling where I’d smudged it with orange paint from the walls. I had just painted the last portion of the ceiling, and was coming off the ladder, when it shifted a bit, I panicked and grabbed at a rung and knocked the whole contraption over. I lept clear of it, but the toppling of course launched the paint can from its perch on the very top of the ladder. On its way down, it fetched me a fine clonk on the forehead.
Well, I guess I am going to be doing some more touch-up painting tonight.
I got the floors cleaned up to where you have to know what happened to be able to find any evidence of it having happened. I got the walls to where I can re-do the paint where it is smudged and it won’t be any big deal.  I scrubbed the bathmat, and rinsed and washed the clothes and rags, so they’ll all be perfectly serviceable. BUT, during this whole fiasco, I was working totally butt-nekkid. Okay, I had on underpants, but otherwise I was basically wearing paint. On my head, shoulders, arms, hands, stomach, legs, I have smudges and streaks of dried-on Kilz. I took a bath once I finally decided that the floor was acceptibly restored, but the paint had dried on too well. I was able to get it out of my hair because I’d been wearing greasy leave-in conditioner that the paint wouldn’t adhere to, but the rest of my skin is blotchy with white paint that won’t scrub away.
My boots are also basically ruined. I’m going to try to work ’em over with some shoe-polish, but right now, they look positively disgraceful.
And I was working on that back bedroom trying to knock it into good shape before Joel’s dad comes into town for a visit. He’s due on Monday! I hope he likes the smell of latex enamel.
My boots look awful!
After cleaning – I had no time nor inclination to take any “before” pictures. I was too busy busting ass to clean up before the paint really set up anywhere. What a fucking nightmare. Seriously, this is something I hope I never, EVER have to deal with again. Worst. Mess. EVER.
The futon cover is pretty much hosed, but the rest of the futon is okay now.
Wow….that sucks! Hope you get it all cleaned up and back in order.
Yeah, it turned out well. I got 99.5% of the paint up off the floor (at best estimate) and Joel worked over the Futon a little more with mineral spirits, and on Sunday, I finished re-painting the lower part of the two walls that had gotten all besmirched. It looks all rightnow, and I happened to have sheets and a quilt that work well with the color scheme, so it’s making quite a pretty spare bedroom now.