A Great Stuff Story

On Saturday, I thought it a good idea to undertake some small home projects that I had been ignoring for way too long. It involved things like putting 2 screws in, so that the dishwasher doesn't fall down on Jessica when she opens it up to put dishes in, fixing the toilet so it doesn't constantly run, and filling in the gap between the wall and the French doors (which I installed almost 2 years ago) that conveniently allows me to use my gas furnace to heat my backyard. That is where this story truly begins.

I got myself a can of Great Stuff, which is a kind of spray-in foam that is designed to fill in gaps just like the one between my wall and my French Doors. I even got the "windows and doors" variety, which will not cause bowing or warping of your door jam. I proceeded to easily and safely fill in around the door so that I am no longer heating my backyard. It worked so well, in fact, that I thought I might use this substance for another very similar job.

When I remodeled our kitchen last spring, I had to move the pluming, and in doing so, I had left a gap in the floor where the pipes enter the kitchen from under the house. It is a large enough gap that your feet get very cold when using the sink, due the the cold air coming from the crawl space under the house. Great Stuff was just the solution. So under the house I went. I brought my half-used can and then a second can, just to make sure I had enough, and I crawled about 60 feet from the crawl space in our spare bedroom to the far corner of the house under the kitchen sink. I proceeded to spray Great Stuff up into a gap that is about 4 inches by 10 inches. Since Great Stuff is designed to expand and harden, it seemed logical that it would begin to harden and fill the hole, thus stopping the flow of cold air into my house. As it turns out, however, I made two slight miscalculations in my thinking. First, I overestimated the rate at which Great Stuff would harden (especially in the cold damp conditions under my house in February). And secondly, I underestimated the subsequent effects of gravity on less-than-solidified Great Stuff.

As I am laying on my back spraying Great Stuff over my head, this oozing yellow mass begins flowing down towards me. My attempt to push it back up with the nozzle of the can is in vain and I am left to try and push it back up with an old piece of pipe that was laying under the house. Realizing that there was too much to keep up there, I moved my head out of the way and let most of it fall to the ground. Instead of formulating a different solution, however, I tried to simply spray it a little further up into the opening. As I was doing this, my hat fell off and in trying to reposition it on my head, I noticed that there was something sticky on my hat...and in my hair.

Realizing at this point that this would already end badly and could only get worse, I gathered up my tools of the trade and made my way 60 feet back under my house to the crawl space and up into the spare bedroom. At this point my hands were not only sticky with yellow Great Stuff, they were also quite dirty from being under the house. I quickly went into the bathroom to begin the process of removing the sticky yellow substance from my hands, but quickly realized that it had already begun to harden. I hollered to Jessica to look on the can to see what I should do, and not finding much helpful information, she got on their website and found these words..."If the foam has not cured or hardened, use acetone or fingernail polish remover (with acetone). If the foam has hardened, there is no solvent that will remove it. To remove cured foam from skin, use a pumice stone (available at most drug stores) and warm, soapy water." Not pleasant! My hands (especially my right hand) were pretty well covered in hardened yellow goo and dirt and looked pretty much like I had leprosy.

To make matters worse, I had it in my hair as well. I jumped in the shower to try and get it out, but quickly realized that there would be no washing it out. I hollered again for Jessica to come with scissors, and she came in an cut out a couple of pretty good-sized chunks of my hair. So at 6pm on Saturday night I had to leave my house on a mission...to go get a haircut so I didn't look ridiculous and to find a pumice stone to try and scrub the Great Stuff off of my hands.

While I was successful and getting a haircut (which looks pretty good considering) and finding a pumice stone at Target, the process of using the pumice stone to remove the Great Stuff was anything but successful. No amount of scrubbing was going to do any good. I was simply going to have to wait until my skin died and fell off, and until that I would have very visibly leprous looking hands.

So at church on Sunday, I had to tell the story about my hands about 50 times. And honestly, it got funnier and more detailed every time. I now I have posted it here for you.

The conclusion of the story is that this morning a few pieces were starting to peel off, so I started scrubbing it with the pumice stone. 45 minutes later I had removed almost all of the Great Stuff, as well as an extra layer of skin or two in a couple of places, but at least now my hands are only a little scraped up, and not completely leprous.

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