I spent most of Sunday night trying to remove super glue from all ten of my fingers. We had gone to our old house to finish a few projects (I’ll share more before-and-afters of that place soon), and I decided one of the floor moldings in my daughter’s room needed quarter round to finish it off. Confident and ambitious, I thought I could handle the job myself.
I’ll spare you the long version, but during the install something went terribly wrong and I ended up gluing every fingertip to the strip of quarter round. Yes, all ten.
There I stood, staring at the molding bonded to my hands, forced to make an immediate choice.
Should I rip the molding from my fingers and risk tearing skin from my fingertips, or should I explain to everyone in Nashville why I had three feet of quarter round glued to my hands? I imagined trying to tell that story and cringed at the thought, so I chose the painful but private route: I pulled the molding off.
Thankfully my skin stayed intact, but the glue did not. I’m currently typing with glue-encrusted fingers. To add insult to injury, after prying the quarter round free I tossed it on the floor—only to find it glued to the floor when I went back for it.
This isn’t my first home-improvement mishap. Over the years I’ve fallen off stools and hit my head on concrete while fixing pipes, used a wire hanger that broke a pipe when clearing a drain, fallen backwards installing curtains, hammered my fingers instead of a nail, and stepped in a tray of oil-based paint. I suspect mishaps come with DIY, though maybe I’m especially accident-prone.
While I patiently peel glue from my fingers, please tell me about your own DIY disasters in the comments—misery loves company. Next time, quarter rounds go on the honey-do list.