things were going so well...

So...I've been prepping and painting my new place and it's been going really smoothly. I've gotten a lot done. I even completed my chalkboard wall in the kitchen today. Somehow, all of that was momentarily eclipsed this evening when I set about spray painting the radiator in the main room. The paint dude at Home Hardware told me I could paint radiator paint on with a brush or spray paint it on. Spray painting seemed like the fastest and easiest option - especially because I didn't want to end up with obvious brush strokes all over the radiator. Ohhh...if only I could set the clocks back 36 hours...I'd forego the spray paint and deal with the brush strokes...

First of all, idiot that I am, I didn't wear a mask or protective gear of any kind. Secondly, I figured that a few feet of drop cloth would do the protection trick for the floor. Oh gah...how wrong I was.

I began spray painting and all seemed well until I realized that the room was filling up with fumes pretty darn quick and the open windows weren't doing quite the ventilating job I'd presumed they'd do. I got up from where I was crouching, spray paint can in hand, to take a few steps back to view the partially-completed job and try to get a sense of how 'fumey' the room really was. And that's when I realized that fumes weren't my only problem. My feet didn't move as quickly as I wanted them to because my flip flops were sticking to the floor. Turns out the airborne spray paint moved up then down, settling all over the room. Lifting up the drop cloth sheet revealed - to my horror - that I had, in the space of about 7 minutes - managed to coat the entire hard wood floor (except for the few feet covered by the cloth), in a fine, sticky coating of paint powder.

I ran to the bathroom to get some water on a cloth to see if I could somehow remedy the floor situation and that's when I noticed what my little adventure had done to me. Let me just say that you really have no idea how many nose hairs you have until each one of them is coated in white spray paint. I don't even want to think about how many brain cells I burned tonight. Golly - it's almost as bad as the time I covered my entire naked body with industrial paint for a university art project.

Needless to say, when I realized that I couldn't just wipe the paint powder off the floor, I packed up my things and ran for home to have a hot shower in an attempt to dislodge paint from my breathing tubes. I'll go back in the morning when the fumes have disappeared and survey the damage. Does anyone know if renting a hard wood floor polisher would rescue the floor (and me)?

To be continued...