What's YOUR biggest mess??

[NW-Bound]

Had a gallon of oil based primer... spilling entire contents directly on top my head...

... find a can of paint thinner which was used as my shampoo...

If we stopped to take a vote now, I think you would take the grand prize.

PS. Somehow, I have always carried in my mind the fear of spilling paint or stain on the floor let alone my head. So, I have taken every precaution to prevent that from happening, and so far so good.

 

[FUEGO]

An 8 year old daughter of mine once ate an excessive amount of really spicy pho. She was just coming down with a nasty stomach bug. That stomach bug caused violent vomiting. At 2 AM as she was laying on the top bunk in her bedroom, her stomach rapidly decided it had enough pho. I woke to the sound of what I thought was running water and splashing. Unfortunately it was vomit falling from a height of 5.5 feet.

When I walked in, I had to establish a few beachheads on the floor to clean up the entire floor. Many loads of soiled sheets, towels, clothing, etc. Tossed out a floor rug. Had to clean the bathtub. It took few hours to clean that mess up.

This happened right after I retired early. My wife (who was still working) probably laughed at me in the morning since she was able to sleep through the night and then get up and go to her clean office job.

 

[travelover]

I have a backpacking buddy who has 20 minute campfire story about getting explosive diarrhea in the middle of the night in a Nepal hotel room. I'll spare the details, but he said that he left a huge tip.

 

[Ronstar]

Maybe not a big mess because it was somewhat confined, but changing our sewage ejector pump is a messy experience.

 

[Janet H]

A somewhat drunken friend thought he'd "help" lift the turkey out of the big fryer. Thankfully only spilled 5 gallons of boiling hot oil on the grass instead of himself.
The greasy spot never went away, and all the grass died. For years.

Somehow I think lots of turkey related events end in similar ways. I had one as well but with a giant vat of bubbling gravy. The gravy is the last thing to the table and a few years ago as the assemblage sat expectantly waiting, I managed to drop an entire pot of the stuff on my tile floor. It was a large batch - enough for 2 14 lbs birds, left overs and a few pot pies. Slick gravy hit the cabinets, kitchen walls, ceiling and splattered into the adjacent room. One of my guests was quick on her feet and came in to see what happened. She was holding a bottle of red wine and slipped in the hot gravy, fell and the almost full bottle smashed as well. Gravy, red wine, glass .. it was a Lucy moment.

 

[aja8888]

I know most of these "mess" stories are home related, but I have one that is work related and burned into my brain cells forever.

Back when I was Engineering Manager for a manufacturing plant in Connecticut (during the second oil embargo), I purchased 8,000 gallons of waste oil for our plant steam boilers as No. 6 fuel oil was unavailable. It was a night delivery and the truck driver either put it in the wrong underground tank inlet pipe, or my powerhouse operator was sleeping (or both). We had two underground tanks for boiler fuel and one was already full since we needed to be prepared for additional fuel shortages.

Bottom line was that the powerhouse was adjacent to the newly bric-bracked Naugatuck River and the fuel ran down the side of the powerhouse, across the yard and into a storm drain that led to the River. Being night, and the truck driver and powerhouse operator, either asleep or whatever, the 8,000 gallons of black, heavy oil went into the river and no one saw the remains until sunup. At precisely 6:00 am (aka "sunrise"), I got a frantic call at home from the shop.......EPA, State Police, Connecticut DEP, and the town Mayor were waiting to see me (oh, and my boss the Vice President).

So much for my raise that year! Besides cleaning rocks along the river bank all summer with college kids, we painted about 25 boats and paid a good fine. Plus, we put alarms on the tank fill system and did a bunch of other remedial stuff. Gotta love those manufacturing plants that are 100+ years old.

 

[MooreBonds]

I have a backpacking buddy who has 20 minute campfire story about getting explosive diarrhea in the middle of the night in a Nepal hotel room. I'll spare the details, but he said that he left a huge tip.

The messiest second-hand story was from my high school days.

I loved chemistry class, and entered an area chemistry lab competition for teams of two, involving titrating an unknown acid/base solution and determining the pH in the least amount of time, with a weighted-score that was also dependent upon how close your answer was.

At the high school it was held at, they also had a few refreshments (cookies, etc.). The high school teacher brought his son, maybe 4-5 years old. The son wandered around the lab before and after the competition, munching on a few cookies.

Later that night, the chemistry teacher awoke to his son crying. He walked into his room to see the most insanely awful explosive diarrhea you could imagine. All over the son's room.

Phenolphthalein is a common ingredient in laxatives (or so the chemistry teacher told us as he relayed the story). And as those science buffs among us will also recognize, is the common solution used for an acid/base indicator.

And is common to find residue of on chemistry lab stations. Which the aforementioned young son had been running his hands all over as he wandered around between munching on cookies.

 

[Car-Guy]

Wow, there have been so many..... But a constant is my general workbench. Sometimes I think I have more tools on my work bench than I do hanging on the wall or in my tool boxes. I'm trying to do better.

On the other hand, my reloading work bench (I reload my own ammo) is always spotless and in perfect order.

A different mindset when reloading ammo VS working on a car.

 

[Payin-the-Toll]

I was pouring a cup of coffee this morning, and a couple of drops splashed out on the counter. I wiped it up with a paper towel.

 

[RetiredAndFree]

My most 'expensive' mess was reaching for a bottle of wine in my wine rack, jarring a smaller bottle of port that should never have been placed in the wine rack (I now realize), watching the neck snap off the port as it hit another bottle on it's way down, then a red slow-motion port spread all over my cream living room carpeting..

Much swearing, dabbing, scrubbing, then finally, $5,000 dollars in new flooring later*, it was resolved. (*If I was going to have to recarpet the living room, might as well do the whole house . . . )

 

[Bestwifeever]

There was the time I walked into and knocked over a great big fully loaded Christmas tree in the dimly lit open area of a busy bowling alley.

 

[Bestwifeever]

Somehow I think lots of turkey related events end in similar ways. I had one as well but with a giant vat of bubbling gravy. The gravy is the last thing to the table and a few years ago as the assemblage sat expectantly waiting, I managed to drop an entire pot of the stuff on my tile floor. It was a large batch - enough for 2 14 lbs birds, left overs and a few pot pies. Slick gravy hit the cabinets, kitchen walls, ceiling and splattered into the adjacent room. One of my guests was quick on her feet and came in to see what happened. She was holding a bottle of red wine and slipped in the hot gravy, fell and the almost full bottle smashed as well. Gravy, red wine, glass .. it was a Lucy moment.

I love the chain reaction here.

 

[robnplunder]

I am sloppy by nature and had my share of messy screw ups. Some of my accomplishments (?) in this area ....

- I change my own motor oil. Like the OP, a few times, I poured in new oil without plugging the oil pan. Once I ran over oil cans with my car while backing up. It was like stepping on a ketchup bag except on a much larger scale.

- Sneezed at a diner table with mouth full of food, food particles flying everywhere. After umpteenth time, DW is not so amused.

- Spilling glass of wine (usually knocking it over) on carpet, sofa, ... I have a good supply of cleaning agents handy to clean up the mess afterward.

- Many of my T-shirts have coffee & juice stains which won't easily come out. They should stop making coffee mugs & glasses which suddenly jump and attack drinkers. It's hard on the glasses, too. They break on impact. Coffee and juice are not the only ones I spill. If it is in a container, I can spill. For those who read Dostoevsky's The Idiot, there is a scene that describes a similar phenomena.

 

[MRG]

Love these stories. The biggest mess I made was me.

In the summer of '74 I helped my DB move a sawmill from along the Susquehanna river to his property. The mill had been built in the '30s, operating till the '50s when it was flooded, never to be run afterwards.

The son then took over and used the roofed in areas for warehousing coal. My j*b was to dismantle all the major components, to be moved. Needless to say it was dirty. Years of grease, covered by 'flood mud', coated in coal dust. All the bolts were coated, lots of wire brushing, heating with a torch, and liquid wrench.

Spent all day there, no help, nothing to clean up with. Wiping my dirty hands on anything I could, mostly my clothes. Eating lunch was a treat, playing eat the sandwich in a baggie.

I stopped at a convenience store on the way home, people just stared at me. Looking briefly in a mirror, I was covered in coal dust, mud, glued on by grease. When I got home it was hysterical, I may as well gone head first into grease and coal dust.It took many showers to finally get that junk off of me. I appreciate the guys that mine coal for us, filthy w*rk.

 

[EastWest Gal]

Not my spill but heard this on the news shortly after moving to PA:

A lot of homes around here use oil heat. The heating oil truck comes to the home and I guess puts the oil in basement tank from the outside. Well, one of the oil trucks went to the wrong address and attached their oil hose to the spout outside. Problem was, there was no tank inside. They dumped the entire oil load directly on the basement floor. I cannot begin to imagine that cleanup problem.


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[scrabbler1]

Not my spill but heard this on the news shortly after moving to PA:

A lot of homes around here use oil heat. The heating oil truck comes to the home and I guess puts the oil in basement tank from the outside. Well, one of the oil trucks went to the wrong address and attached their oil hose to the spout outside. Problem was, there was no tank inside. They dumped the entire oil load directly on the basement floor. I cannot begin to imagine that cleanup problem.


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I've heard this story a few times happening here on Long Island over the years. Often, the house was uninhabited so it wasn't discovered right away. It was a helluva mess, for sure.

 

[tryan]

Was gutting a ceiling .... pulling on a sheet of sheet rock ...looking up when the whole sheet freed from the ceiling. 5 decades of mouse droppings covered me from head to toe. No hat ... no safety googles.

I would estimate the piles where at least an inch high across 32 sq feet ... disgusting.

 

[tryan]

A lot of homes around here use oil heat. The heating oil truck comes to the home and I guess puts the oil in basement tank from the outside. Well, one of the oil trucks went to the wrong address and attached their oil hose to the spout outside. Problem was, there was no tank inside. They dumped the entire oil load directly on the basement floor. I cannot begin to imagine that cleanup problem.

In a neighboring town a house was condemned for 5 years after the home owner exhausted their finances suing the oil company. Problem was the tank was faulty ... split during a fill. Lost the suit. Last I heard they are living in a trailer on the property.

AND the town says the trailer is a zoning violation. WHAT A NIGHTMARE.

 

[Asher Aion]

A new home in our area had heating fuel end up in the basement as well, the driver of the fuel truck unloaded in the new home on the property and not the old home as requested. Law suit ensued, and won, as the home was condemned.

At the visitation/wake of my father 20 years ago, family and friends gathered in the funeral home and paid last respects to my dad. As it was winter and people were hanging around, the coatrack in the smallish but packed room was beyond normal payload. My uncle, getting ready to leave pulled his coat off the rack sending the coatrack crashing to the ground and spewing coats all over in the process. A solemn event, with the sudden passing of my dad, turned nervous laughter and then uncontrolled laughter by all. My dad would have liked that.

My most recent mess was on Monday as I changed the pink cartridge on my HP4620 printer in my home office. Apparently I picked the blue cartridge, still 1/4 full, and promptly dropped it on my newer hardwood bamboo floor. I freaked, tried to soak the splatter, smeared it, and then screamed/swore, probably again. My DW, knowing me too well, calmly found some nail polish remover and fixed the problem in minutes. My mess but she bailed me out again.

 

[sengsational]

I love it when stuff like this happens.

 

[Walt34]

My DW, knowing me too well, calmly found some nail polish remover and fixed the problem in minutes. My mess but she bailed me out again.

Stuff like this is probably why married men live longer than single ones. We've had similar stuff happen here too. I lose things. DW somehow knows were it is.

 

[Meadbh]

I am enjoying this thread, but losing one's home due to oil in the basement is really sad.

Fortunately I don't have any major messes to report, although I did once have an episode of explosive diarrhea while waiting to board a plane. I think it was related to sushi I had eaten a couple of hours before at a little izakaya restaurant that a friend had taken me to. As a result, I am now very careful about what I eat while traveling and I always carry a spare pair of panties!

 

[Keim]

Thankfully you weren't IN the plane.

 

[tinlizzy]

The biggest mess I made was accidentally dropping a gallon of milk from a height of about 5 ft. The lid popped off and the jug split. There was milk everywhere including the ceiling.

The biggest mess my son made was with baby powder. I received a very large container of generic baby powder when he was born and I hated the smell of it. It went into the closet and he found it a few years later. When I found him he had a big pile on top of his head and baby powder in every nook of the room. Thankfully he had shut his bedroom door so I wouldn't catch him - which is exactly what made me suspicious.

But the biggest mess ever was the company I hired to blow insulation in the house failed to plug two old plumbing holes under the kitchen sink and blew insulation into the entire downstairs! My entire downstairs was gray! They cleaned it up but the dust in the air just kept settling. My mom and I cleaned every surface, every few days for a couple weeks!


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[travelover]

Just remembered a great mess.

When I was dating DW, she had just hard boiled an egg and was concerned that the yolk was not fully cooked. I, genius that I am, suggested giving the egg about 1 minute in the microwave oven. She had removed the egg and just set it on the table when it literally exploded like a firecracker. There was egg over every square inch of the kitchen including the ceiling, walls and floor. Scared the crap outta both of us, too.