I spent most of Sunday night trying to get super glue off of all of my ten fingers. You see, we were at our old house finishing a few more projects (I’ll share more before and afters of that house soon) when I decided that one of the floor moldings in my daughters room could use some quarter round to finish it off. And being the capable and ambitious woman I am, I decided I could tackle that project myself.
I’ll spare you the details of how this all came about, but in my attempt to install the molding, something went horribly wrong and I ended up gluing all ten of my fingers to the quarter round. Yes, all ten. With super glue.
So, there I was, staring in disbelief at the quarter round super glued to my fingers when I had to make a choice. Immediately.
Should I rip the molding from my fingers and endure the possibility of all the skin being ripped from my fingertips or explain to everyone in Nashville why I had three feet of quarter round stuck to my hands. I decided that explaining the whole incident to Simplemom would be mortifying. So, I opted to extract the molding from my fingertips.
In spite of the fact that my fingers were completely bonded to the quarter rounds, I am happy to report my skin stayed on. But so did the glue. Right now I am typing with glue encrusted fingers. And, to make matters worse, I threw the quarter round on the floor after prying it from my fingers. When I went back to retrieve the molding, it was now glued to the floor.
This is not the first time I have had a home improvement incident. I’ve fallen off of stools and hit my head on a cement floor while trying to fix pipes, broke a pipe with a wire clothes hanger trying to clear a drain, fallen over backwards while installing curtains, hammered my fingers instead of a nail, stepped in a tray of oil based paint … I think disasters go with the territory of DIY’ers. Or maybe it is just me.
So, please dear friends, while I continue to peel glue from my fingers, do tell me your own home improvement disasters in the comments! Misery loves company! Next time, I’m putting quarter rounds on the honey-do list.
Find THIS OLD HOUSE printable “Honey Do Coupons” and instructions here!
This is such funny timing. I just posted one of my little DIY mishaps!
http://foursistersfarm.blogspot.com/2009/01/girlie-hammers.html
Hope the glue wears off soon. That’s such an irritation. Not that I’ve ever experienced it my self or anything.*wink*
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Melissa, I am sorry this happened to you. I’m scared of that super glue to be honest. I worked in a doctor’s office for 20 something years~enough said.
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Hi Melissa, Even though I continue to do projects, I consider myself ‘glue and tape impaired’. Hot glue is my worst enemy … I always burn myself. Or glue moss to my fingertips. And super glue should be renamed to Skin Glue. These projects mentioned here, and yours, should be a TV show parody of the DYI shows. Now that’s reality tv!
Melissa,
You poor girl! I’ve fallen off ladders more times than I care to admit. That is why I gave up doing wall finishes and murals for a living. I only do it for myself and friends now. I fell off the ladder while working in the home of a friend and her husband was there to help me. He asked me if I was hurt and I said at this point even my pride isn’t hurt because I’m so used to it!
Hugs,
Cathie
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Ouch!!!! Glad your fingers stayed in tact.
Amy @ Living Locurtos inspiring blog post..Something fun!
I did something similar when super glue first came out….I glued my fingers together while trying to glue a fake nail on…wasnt so bad until my client came in for her haircut…LOL. Well, just get one of those big fat black nail files from the beauty supply house & sand away! It really works & if you have any callouses, sand them off too! Sorry to hear about all of your DIY mishaps.
I hope you’ve gotten it off. I’ve done that many times, and I usually just pick at it until it comes off or file it off with a nail file.
I guess my biggest DIY disaster was the time I fell through a floor. We had just bought an old mobile home and I was demoing the disgusting kitchen. I knew there was a weak spot in the floor so I was trying to avoid it, but I was also trying to remove some carpet that had been glued under the walls. One misstep and I went through clear up to the hip. Luckily it was right in the middle of two joists with nothing underneath it–no insulation, no underbelly seal, nothing. So I didn’t hurt my leg and we found out we had even more work to do. I don’t even know how anyone lived in that place it was so bad.
I actually went through another rotten spot another time, but that time I was quicker and I jumped back before my leg went all the way through. There was also the time I stepped off the deck to pick up some boards (the steps that the previous owners had let rot right off the deck) and I stepped on a nail probably an inch and a half to two inches long that went through my shoe and all the way into my foot. You’ll understand why I wasn’t very happy about using the electric saw or helping DH use the power nailer–that place was trying to kill me and I didn’t want it to succeed!
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I am laughing so hard, I’m crying.
I am glad every one is safe… for now : )
Dee
hi! i hope it all turns out ok, skin where it belongs and beautiful molding finishing the room! i never seem to get superglue right. mine never holds stuff EXCEPT my skin. i’ve sworn off it!
my best incident is the red paint my daughter spilled on her bedroom carpet (formerly off-white) when we were redoing the room. about a quart of it. i got about 3 cups of it up. that really wasn’t enough, but it wasn’t like that was the only spot on the carpet, let’s be honest! and then there is the pine green wax of the candle that exploded. again, getting most of it up didn’t quite do the job.
answer in both cases: AREA RUG! creativity to the rescue! and getting over each event with a shrug! jkj
Melissa, I read your post to my hubby and his “work crew” as they met at my house before starting out for the day. Boy did they have a good laugh. See you’re spreading good cheer all the way here in Georgia. Ha, ha. I had to tell you that. They all left with a smile on their faces. Very creative though, I hope you got it all down eventually.
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I am so sorry…but I cannot get the image out of my mind, and cannot stop laughing! But rest assured, we have had many a mishap around here as well. Suggestion: do not try to paint anything outside late in the afternoon. It will not dry, and the dew will collect and make wet paint run off all over your brand new Ipe decking while you sleep dreaming of a job well done.
katiedids inspiring blog post..The Family’s Room
Oooh, the best incident I can think of wasn’t exactly home-improvement…it was DIY home-building. We were just about done finishing the cement for our basement floor, I was reaching in from outside the footings, bent over, smoothing mud around some plumbing pipes. My husband was running…can’t remember the name of the machine, but it looked like one of those rotary floor-buffers…anyway, he caught one of the pipes with it, and it whipped out of his hands and around and the handle whacked me right in my little-ole-unsuspecting head…knocked me FLAT on my can. I have to admit, I had to walk away and have myself a good cry for a minute. Kinda hurts just thinking about it!
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Hmmm…gluing quarter round. I haven’t finished my baseboard project because I thought I needed to buy those little nails. But super-glue! What a great idea.
p.s. Sorry about the fingers.
Hey Melissa, thanks for a hearty laugh. Of COURSE you ended up with molding glued to the floor. You probably knew that acetone-based nail polish remover will break a superglue bond without damaging your skin, but it’s kinda hard to open the bottle when all your figners are glued to a piece of wood …
My personal DIY disaster was more than 25 years ago, when my future husband and I had a bunch of friends on the roof of our house, removing several layers of old, thin, highly flammable and very leaky shingles. We had a covered hacienda-style porch that ran the width of the front of the house, and there were ladders and scaffolding set up all along the porch for access to the roof.
I was in the front yard, about 25 feet from the porch, when I heard the phone ring inside the house. Not wanting to miss the call, I ran across the yard, seriously misjudging the height of the scaffolding. My upper body came to a dead stop when my forehead slammed into a 2″ thick scaffolding plank, but my feet kept going for another millisecond, tipping me backwards and slamming me flat on my back on the concrete walkway. A classic slipped-on-a-banana-peel type fall — minus the banana peel — performed at high speed while being smacked in the forehead with the equivalent of a baseball bat.
Just like in a car accident, the “loose” items continued their forward movement: my silver-and-turquoise stud earrings literally SHOT out of my earlobes and hit the front wall, six to eight feet from where my head stopped. Quite a lesson in Newtonian physics [an object in motion remains in motion until acted on by another force]. My earrings were discovered on the porch later in the day: I had no idea they were missing, as I’d been busy holding ice packs on the front and back of my head.
No concussion, just two big-bumps-with-bruises, and a seriously bruised ego. What should have been just a couple hours of feeling foolish grew into 25 years of “Hey, remember the time Victoria …” My foolish fall gained the stature of Myth, becoming A Story Of Great Proportion, retold with relish at family holidays, gatherings of friends-who-were-there, and — of course — at least once during any and all DIY projects I’ve done over the past 25 years.
Cheers,
victoria ~ auction girl vintage
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Ooh, nasty! That glue can be fun, huh?
I didn’t have this incident, but my hubby did. We were making wall panels to cover a mural for my baby room, and I saw how my hubby was using my nailer. “Move your hands, they’re in nail range” I told him. Apparently he was fine… until a few seconds later. Sure enough, the nail didn’t go in quite straight and skinned his finger. We don’t say we put our blood, sweat, and tears into that room for nothing!
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This really isn’t a home improvement story, but still kind of funny!
After my dad passed away, I was sort of in charge of all the household “manly” chores, because my mother was limited by a walker. So i had to learn to cut grass, exc. This includes taking care of both our pool and hot tub. On my first try changing the hot tub water, which I had seen my dad do a million times- i managed to flood our entire basement.
I attached the pump and hose and directed it to the wash basin in the basin, because our hot tub is actually in the house, not outside, where we could drain it easily! The hot tub was draining perfectly, so I walked away and had dinner. When i returned after dinner to check the progress, there was water everywhere!
I had to get the shop vac and vacuum out the water from the carpet, and luckily I rolled the carpet up and hung it outside to dry. It was a mess, and from that day forward, I always duct tape the hose to the basin, so it doesn’t accidentally fly out!
Well once I was painting our overhand on our house, with a paint roller. I was told by my parents to get the paint very think so I would only have to paint once. Well the paint was so thick that as I rolled it on, it was dripping- on my hair! Even though I washed my hair everyday, the paint didn’t come out completely for a good 10 days or so!