Okay... it wasn't intentional... but I'll enlighten you with the fun time we had two nights ago.
I've been waiting for some nice day to go out in the garage to finish our new table. The beautiful new (unfinished) table has been sitting in our garage for a few weeks now, and I've had a few too many things on my mind lately to go out there (i.e. China)... that, and the fact that I can't deal with 40 degree weather for long. I need a nice day.
I have managed to stain the two leaves for the table... and we all agree that the Cherrywood stain on the alder wood table is beautiful. (Even my woodworking dad thought it looked great!) I even bought the polyurethane so that I could apply several coats to the table. Well, since purchasing it, I've just left it sit in our laundry room. I thought it was on the dryer. Whoops! Wrong.
We have a front-loading washer. Perhaps ours is out of the ordinary, but ours shakes like crazy when spinning. We've learned over the last year that you do not set important things on top of the washer. From time to time, we hear crashes while the washer is spinning... boxes of laundry sheets, detergent bottles, and most often laundry baskets. It's a normal occurrence in our home. There just isn't enough room to hold everything in there without using the washer as a shelf. :-) So the other night (Monday), when we heard a big crash and Mike asked what it was, I simply said, "Oh... it was just in the laundry room."
Well about a half hour later, Mike went into the laundry room to get the clothes. He immediately yelled, "What is this? Chris... you need to get in here. I have no idea what this is, and it isn't good." Sure enough... it was the quart of polyurethane. Boy, that sucker must've hit so perfectly on a corner or something and popped the top (which, I had NEVER opened). YUCK! Our new linoleum (installed last year after a 3-story flood... another long story there) was now a shiny glossy puddle of polyurethane. How does one clean this!? Well, we learned...
We sopped up what we could, and tried our best with a concocted mopping-sopping-thing (mop handle wrapped in various towels) to get under the drawers and between the two machines. We sprayed Windex Multisurface so much that the bottle was getting sticky from our hands. But it seemed to work (since the polyurethane was NOT dry). That and Goo-gone. Our laundry room is so small, it holds two machines... and that's it. Both doors leading to the room swing INWARD too. So, it's always tight. What a pain. I must have been a riot on my hands and knees with my feet up in the air (trying not to get the shoes in anything) and twisted at the waist to get back between these machines. I think we removed most of the polyurethane from the surface (though it's not perfect). I was desperate to keep our clothes clean and the wood floors from getting polyurethaned in the process. My only concern is that we may have polyurethaned our machines to the floor! Well, fortunately for us, these machines shake so much, I think they'll wiggle free from any adhesion. ;-) I did notice though, as I pulled out the bottom drawers of the machines, that there are tears in our linoleum back in the corners. Ha... bet those installers never figured we'd see that! (It's not a big deal.)
But now when you enter our little tiny laundry room, you get a blast of mmm mmm mmm.... polyurethane odors! Blech.
Guess I gotta go buy some new quarts for the table now. What do you think? Satin or Gloss?
