The dangers of home improvement...

Before leaving work on Friday afternoon I spent some time planning out my weekend (like I almost always do.) And this weekend was no different than the others - a mix of chores, house stuff, more staining, some down time with friends, etc. And things got even better after I got home on Friday to discover that our carpenter went ahead and stained the remaining boards which I had planned to do first thing on Saturday. Whoo-hoo! One thing down, 50 million more to go... So I spent Saturday doing chores, groceries and getting the house ready to entertain my sister-in-law and her boyfriend later that night followed by some friends and their kids Sunday for lunch. While I was doing all of that, J was busy outside hanging lights on the front of the house. Things were going great all weekend. Saturday night turned out to be a fun dinner and movie night with a chinese stir-fry and homemade eggrolls - yuummmmyyy!!! Sunday started out with a hike with a few friends and their kids followed by sandwiches, salad and cookies at our house. Poor J - we inundated the house with 4 women and 6 kids ranging in age from 11 to 4!!

Everything was going great until I saw one of the cats outside and decided to bring him in for the night. As I walked outside, a nasty smoke smell hit me and I looked over in the front yard to see a rag on our carpenter's bench just smoldering away. What the!?!? I ran to the back deck and got B's sand bucket (that had been sitting there for a while just collecting rain water) and threw the rag into the bucket. (Now that I think about it, picking up a hot smoldering rag with my bare hands probably wasn't the smartest move, but I was in emergency mode at that point.) My first reaction was - who lit this on fire?? All the kids were playing outside and the masons were busily working on the house, so there were plenty of bodies to potentially accuse. But after pulling the rag out of the water, it dawned on me - this thing lit itself on fire! It was soaked in stain and had been all wadded up on the workbench. The perfect recipe for spontaneous combustion according to any label on a can of oil-based stain. Thank god I caught that on time. Our nice newly stained boards were lying right next to that workbench. To say nothing of the nice newly wood-sided front of the house!

So from familyhandyman.com - ^Start Public Service Announcement^
CAUTION: Spread out stain-soaked rags and let them dry (or better yet, soak them in water) before disposing of them in a waste container. Piles of damp stain-soaked rags are a spontaneous combustion hazard. ^End Public Service Announcement^