Painting the Stairs

I appologize to all my fans for not posting for some time.
Rachel and the kids spent a week in Utah while I was back in Georgia working. This proved to be a great time to get things done around the house.
One of the things I wanted to do is paint the stairs. A few months ago, we ripped the carpet off the stairs and painted them white. This makes them much easier to clean given the fact that dispite the prohibition from having food on the stairs, food often gets spilled on the stairs.
We painted them with regular latex paint. This was a bad idea. After a few weeks, the paint started wearing, and staining, and looking shabby.
I thought that it would be great to paint the stairs while the family is gone because once you paint them, you need to let them dry before you walk on them.
I went and purchased some great oil-based paint designed for stairs and other high traffic areas. I painted the stairs, and not really thinking, I tried to clean up with soap and water. This was not an effective method. In a few minutes, I had completely white hands, and all the soap and water seemed to do very little about it. Unfortunately, I was not aware of the paint thinner we had in the shed. I stood there for a few minutes, thinking, "Wow, Matt you are really in a pickle." Short of waiting for my hands to dry, and then driving to home depot and getting paint thinner, I had no idea what to do.

After a few minutes, I thought of the olive oil in the cupboard. (Extra virgin). I pored some on my hands and it they cleaned right up. I was amazed. Not only did they clean right up, but they also smelled faintly like a pizza. It was a win win situation.

So to help Rachel feel better when she reads this, the next time I painted, I used the corn oil to clean my hands, not the olive oil.