As you may have noticed, we pretty frequently share our disasters and defeats with you — whether our partners are flooding the basement while distracted by a Prince Dance Party or we’re discovering that we may have to retile 400 square feet because of just impossible-to-replace missing tiles (and that was just within the last week), we take full advantage of having “disaster” in our blog name to freely confess (and complain) when things don’t go as planned. Fortunately, people seem to enjoy these stores because a) sometimes they’re entertaining; and b) we think everyone can relate. In real life, disasters abound.
So today we’re trying something a little different. Rather than writing more about things we’ve messed up or are down about, we thought we’d open things up and invite you to share with us your disasters. Did the dog once trek wet paint all over your new carpet? Did you try a paint color that you thought was “grellow” and turned out to just be “dirty tennis ball”? Did your renovation take 10 months and $15,000 more than expected because you discovered a family of endangered snow leopards living in your crawl space?
Dramatic reenactment, no animals were harmed in the making of this lame joke
Whatever the story, we want to hear it! Feel free to share in the comments on this post, but we’d also love to see your photos and hear your longer stories, so send those along to naomiandsage@plasteranddisaster.com with the subject line “DISASTER!” Plus let us know if you’d be up for us to share your story with the world — if we get enough, we’ll share back some of our favorites in a few weeks. And if we get nothing, we’ll assume you guys are perfect and we’ll stop being so open about what trainwrecks we can be. Please don’t leave us hanging.
But before we go, we wanted to further empower you by mentioning a few awesome bloggers who do a great job of sharing their own disasters. All three are pretty different, so hopefully there’s something for everyone.
First up, a big shout out to Ashley at Bigger than the Three of Us, who has a recurring feature called “The Ugly Truths” where she shares some of the not-so-pretty realities of home improvement. Her most recent post is about living through a kitchen renovation (Sage is taking notes…).
Source: Bigger than the Three of Us
We also love Manhattan Nest, by the exceedingly talented Daniel Kanter. Daniel takes on hugely challenging home improvement projects (often on what seems like a whim), and is really honest about what transpires. Pretty much every post is a mix of inspiring triumph and crushing disaster. His writing is really engaging and funny, and his whole persona just feels really open and authentic. Sage recently re-read his post about redoing his kitchen floor hoping for inspiration with her own kitchen floor saga, and even though it was her second time reading it she was still laughing out loud.
Source: Manhattan Nest
And lastly and in a totally different vein is Pintester. If you haven’t read her, you must (unless you don’t like bad language and sexual innuendo…in that case, she is not for you). Granted she hasn’t posted anything new in awhile, but if you haven’t read her before then there’s a long archive of content for you to check out. Basically, she takes things she finds on Pinterest and tries them out herself…usually failing in a totally hilarious manner.
For instance, take her attempt at a 10-minute skirt:
Source: Pintester
I think we’ve all been there with Pinterest. Incidentally, we just discovered that if you search “home decor disaster” in Pinterest, a bunch of our stuff comes up. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. But if instead you search “home disaster,” you get this:
No thank you.
Super small, but so cringe causing. We moved into a new house (a colonial with a very prominent front door…no screen door….very visible) Right away we knew we wanted to change the door color. Simple right? Well, we suck at picking out paint colors. Always have, always will. No samples and stepping back and looking at it for us. We dove in and painted on a Sunday. It dried purple, very purple. This was not a “pop of color” purple. This was a “What were they thinking?” “There goes the neighborhood” purple! Our kids started school the next day and the bus stop was right at our house. I met all our neighbors that day. Each time I met someone new, I felt compelled to explain that we did not like how the door turned out and we would be changing it very soon.
Love it! I feel like that’s me all the time, trying to explain an unfortunate project or design choice and typically the other person has absolutely not noticed to begin with 🙂 I’m also not the best at picking out paint, it’s so hard and I’m so impatient about really testing out samples properly. So what color did you ultimately repaint it?
I can’t think of any actual disasters. Just the endless list of things I’m going to get done Real Soon Now. Like the missing tiles in the bathroom floor that were there when I bought the house in August of 2012….
Glad I’m not the only one with the Perpetual To Do List.
Disaster is probably too strong of a term. But, ya, I’ve messed up plenty. There was the time that I was carrying a piece of old trim I had removed, nail still sticking out of one end, and I swung around the corner too widely and the nail went right through the window pane. Another time I had pulled up the old, pet-stained carpet and padding from the previous owner (and had not yet sealed the subfloor), and stupidly brought along my adorable doggy to the house to supervise my work for the day and he went around the whole first level marking his territory over the old stains. You guys, it was so bad that I thought he had suddenly come down with a disorder or something, I’ve never seen that dog pee so much. Happily, dog is fine, floor is now fine, and with the help of margaritas I’m on the road to recovery.
Oh god that’s awful! Margaritas really do cure all ills. Our cat has an unfortunate habit of marking his territory, so I totally feel you. Thank goodness pets are so cute or we’d never put up with them (they really do have us fooled!).