What NOT to Do With a Can of Red Spray Paint

Now that the spring sunshine is upon us, it has forced me to again look more closely at my back door. My white back door. My somewhat white back door.

Ok, let me back up just a tad. I guess it was back in the late fall - I had one of my ultra-fun projects going on. I was in the process of spray painting some nice little recycled bowls for an upcoming pin cushion project. I had several bowls - just waiting to be painted a variety of colors.  How fun!  And one was going to be painted a nice bold red.

I've got a lot of new spray paint cans on my property - but I also have a lot of older ones that need to be used up. I happened to have a can of red that had sat in my basement for quite some time. Great plan to use up what I've already got. Right? But the older spray paint plastic caps are really difficult to remove. (The new ones are much more people friendly.)  Of course, I was having a struggle with this cap. I should be able to slide a flat-head screwdriver into the convenient hole to pry the cap off.

Ya - I said "should be able to". But I couldn't find a flat-head. What? Don't tell me that one of my tools wasn't where it was supposed to be!  Actually, it was no surprise to me. Welcome to my world. So in my desperation (yes - I can get frustrated rather quickly with this sort of thing) to get the cap off, I decided that a Phillips screwdriver would work just as well. Dang. No such luck. I STILL couldn't get the darn thing off. What else is in my handy-convenient-I-sure-wouldn't-want-to-have-to-walk-an-extra-step drawer that might work?  Scissors? Why not? I proceeded to begin prying the cap off with the pair of scissors and it's working!  Great!  Oops!  NOT so great! As I pried the cap off, the tip of the scissors continued on it's way to the metal top of the spray can and poked a hole right in the metal.

Immediately, red paint began spraying all over my kitchen!! As quickly as I could think of what to do - I ran to the garbage can and held it, for what felt like an eternity, in the garbage can until it had finished spraying the rest of the red paint which was left in the spray can.

After I recovered from my initial shock, I saw that I had red paint on my cupboards, in the sink, on the carpet, on the door, and all over me. I proceeded to clean up most of the mess and decided to give up on trying to make my white door white again. I decided that I would live with it until I could get it painted again.

Well, I was able to ignore it all winter long, but I can ignore it no longer. One of these days very soon, I MUST repaint my almost-white-back door. The red splatters and crevices must be gone.

This, my friends, is what NOT to do with a can of red spray paint.  :-)