A Chair, 18 Eggs, and a 3-hour Clean-up

This chair is a fantastic place to start.  My mother is talented at refinishing furniture, and once my husband and I bought a house I had the space to try my hand at it as well.  My mom passed on a chair to me.  A simple project really, sand and strip the wood, recover the seat.  Not much to it…right?

My husband is in the military so it’s not uncommon for him to be gone two days, two weeks, a month at a time.  This story takes place during one of his two-week departures.  I love my husband, but the house definitely stays cleaner when he’s not around.  At the time of this story I worked 4-tens so I was always blessed with a three-day weekend.  I started this weekend by cleaning the house so I could enjoy having it STAY clean while my husband was away.

The second day of my weekend I turned my attention to more enjoyable tasks, namely the chair awaiting me in the garage.  I attacked it with amazing energy, sanding, scraping, and chipping away the blue paint and stickers that adorned it.  I was encouraged with each large chunk of paint that came away, and determined to strip away even the most stubborn of sections.

After about 1 ½ hours of work I headed inside for a drink.  When entering the house I was hit by a burning smell.  “What?  I wasn’t cooking anything?”  The smell became stronger as I went down the hallway to the kitchen.  “Or was I…”  The eggs...I had started boiling 18 eggs that would be turned into deviled eggs for a large family get-together the next day.  They had been boiling for one. and. a. half. hours...

My confusion quickly turned into panic as I rushed the rest of the way into the kitchen.  Do you know what happens to eggs when you boil them for 1 ½ hours?  Well first, the water all boils out of the pan.  Then, the eggs explode!  Eighteen eggs all over my kitchen!

My house is designed with extra high ceilings, and in the main part there are three rooms with just partial walls between them.  This would be the kitchen, living room, and a room we use as a library.  Typically I enjoy the open feeling the partial walls provide, but on this day they facilitated the eggs spreading into three rooms.  Eggs were on the ceiling, on the floor,  on the couch, on top of those partial walls.  Everywhere!

After I cried, laughed, and sent my husband texts about it I finally set about cleaning it up.  During the three hours of clean-up I tried every thing from mopping the ceiling (not such a great idea) to bringing the dog in to eat whatever he could reach (my husbands idea).  The smell of charred eggs lingered for weeks.

Needless to say the chair got put on the back-burner after this experience…