The One With The Giant Poking Device

Sometimes things over here at our Little House On The Corner don’t go quite to plan.

Sometimes we have an idea that we think is genius only to then realise that what we’re thinking doesn’t work or that we’re completely mad and barking up the wrong tree.

Sometimes we’re really lucky. Mostly we’re not.

One of our ingenious absolutely ridiculous ideas was to finish the varnishing of our freshly sanded hallway floor in the dark. I’d managed to apply two coats of varnish in the day, but was desperate to get the project finished, so I painted everything aiming to finish at the bottom of the stairs so that I could then go straight to bed.

Bad idea.

The light wasn’t great and I could barely make out where I’d already varnished and where I hadn’t. Painting so that I’d finish at the stairs wasn’t too stupid – deciding to set the alarm before going to bed was. We couldn’t reach our keypad to set the alarm so, taking inspiration from Friends, decided that it would be a good idea to use a giant poking device to press the numbers.

Our plan seemed simple. Press the numbers with the giant poking device, jump onto the stairs and quickly varnish the area where I’d been stood and then run up the stairs before the alarm sets. Here’s a reenactment for you. 

Pressing the numbers with the rod from a distance wasn’t particularly easy, but after a few attempts, we finally got the alarm set. (We can set the downstairs separately to the upstairs so that when we are at home, only the downstairs sensors are on).

Then the countdown started…20 seconds to go. I quickly touched up the varnish (still only barely being able to make out which areas were varnished and unvarnished) and then jumped up the stairs as fast as I could. All was fine – till about 2 seconds later when I realised that I hadn’t been quick enough and had set the alarm off.

I then had to run down the stairs, tiptoe across the freshly varnished and rather slippery floor to turn the alarm off while Jan was laughing his head off at our stupidity.

Needless to say, after varnishing over my footprints, we didn’t set the alarm again that night.

We’ve done so many silly mistakes over the last three years. Has anything you’ve attempted not turned out as expected? Have you ever had an idea that seemed to make perfect sense until you actually tried it? We’d love to hear your stories (it’ll make us feel better about our shortcomings)!