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I washed three pairs of jeans and a new sheet in my washer. During this wash, the washer moved significantly, enough to jam the closet door that ran in front of it. Is this a concern? I don’t think it usually moves, at least not that much, but it may have done so gradually over the past ten months and I just didn’t notice.
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As a result of the above, I had to break out some paint left behind by the previous owner to touch up the back of the closet door. I cleaned the 2” paint brush in my kitchen sink, because I saw a thumbnail picture of someone cleaning a paint brush in a bathroom sink, and figured it was okay. After covering my hands with paint, I eventually found out that no, that was not recommended. How screwed are my pipes? Is there something I need to watch out for or do? (I also didn’t really clean that brush enough, but that’s a lot cheaper to replace compared to plumbing…)
Latex paint? It cleans up with soap and water. You should be fine.
Nope, it looks like it’s enamel. I’m sure this changes things significantly.
Oil-based paints turn into a gloppy mess in water, and will not ever wash off.
If this didn’t happen, it’s water-based.
As for the washer - if it’s level, it shouldn’t move. If the load was that badly off-balance, the washer should have stopped before it walked across the floor. Unless the washer is really old.
I wouldn’t worry about your pipes unless the drain stops up. Then call a plumber.
Homeownership 101 “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it”
Anyway you have the washer to get level.
Eventually the maintenance of stuff will get set in your mind.
Just run some hot water. While not ideal, it should ok.
This is terrible advice, often fixing things early prevent far more costly repairs and improves the living in the house.
Also, prevention and simple care can save very pricey plumbing calls.
Then is there anything I should or could do about my specific question (other than don’t do it again)?
Go look at the paint can, and tell us what it says.
Yeah, it says oil based. I have no idea why I didn’t see that before.
Most likely, the sheet got tangled up with one or more pairs of jeans, producing an unbalanced load, which can make the washer move around a lot. In future, try to have more balanced loads.
Well, what’s done is done.
It’s not going to hurt your pipes, but you shouldn’t be putting oil-based paint down the drain.
Works at my house.
There’s always things to fix around a house. Maintenance is important. But you can’t chase every tiny thing or you’d never live in your house you’d just be working on it.
That ain’t no way to be. IMHO
There’s also a big difference between the maintenance situation and needs of a 2yo house, a 20yo house, and a 200yo house. Likewise as between a simple 900sf bungalow versus a 4500sf McMansion versus a wildy added-onto farmhouse.
Because you didn’t know to actively look. Now you do.
Armed with this new knowledge you might want to evaluate all the paints the previous owner left behind. Oil-based house paints are rare in modern usage, but were universal 40 or 60 years ago. You may find half your house is painted in oil-based, and half isn’t. Hint: that will also have significant implications if/when you choose to repaint, not just touch up.
Something I do is keep notes on all the shit I learn about my house as I go along. And refer to those notes before starting a new job. I might remember a few years from now that I once had a surprising painting problem, but I might not remember the details of what the problem actually was. Having a note that says “The light green interior trim color is oil-based paint” might save you next time.
I keep my notes in OneNote where they are searchable & updatable and all in one place. It’s also useful to write down every factoid the prior owner may have shared with you at hand-over. You might know them all now, but you probably won’t whenever they become actionable months or years later.
Also, for water-based paints, the amount of paint someone will wash down a drain while cleaning up a single small brush and two hands after touching up damage in a house will be negligible. Better to choose a sink near to the building’s drain exit and choose one with plenty of water flow and to flush the drain thoroughly afterwards. But it’s not like doing this once or twice a year for decades would matter spit.
If I was repainting the entire interior and washing out multiple rollers day after day I’d be more likely to just treat those rollers as disposable and only wash my hands in the sink.
General advice, homeowner or not:
Always, always, always read the label. Paint cans. Glues. Oils. Bug sprays. Cleansers. All sorts of stuff.
Once you’re used to working in a given area, you get a better idea what to look for, and reading the label won’t take as long. Also you get a better idea as to what on a label may be the company covering their ass against highly unlikely occurences and what you really do need to take every bit of the recommended precautions against. But keep reading the labels.
Get the washing machine back into its proper position, and then check if it’s level and all four corners are firmly set on that particular bit of floor. If it seems not to be, there may be little adjusting doohickeys under each corner; if so, adjust as needed. If there aren’t, get some shims. (Hardware store.)
I also suspect an unbalanced load. Were you within hearing while the machine was running? If so, did you hear thumping noises? If you hear such in future, pause the machine, open the door, reach in and shake the load out, disentangling anything necessary in the process. And try not to put in loads consisting of, say, one really heavy item and a couple of light ones.
I’ve got a spreadsheet with a tab for everything that requires maintenance. Car/4-wheeler/mower/hvac/house. I also take note of the hvac and water heater outlet temperatures. That came in handy recently when I replaced the water heater because I had the old one dialed into the perfect temperature.
FYI, I checked my washing machine with the level function on my iPhone, and it looks like it’s balanced fine, so likely an uneven load. I’ll put more stuff in next time, at the least. I guess it was just hard to picture for me how it could get that uneven from a sheet getting a little tangled.
Well, old wives tale. Take it as that. If I have what I think might get unbalanced I always add a towel. I don’t know why this works. I have no proof it works except my own experience. But it works.
When I had a top loader on terminally unlevel floors I did it all the time.
Is this your first experience with front loading HE washing machines? They spin far faster than old fashioned top loaders. Which makes any imbalance much more critical. Part of their vaunted “efficiency” is efficiency at wringing out the wet clothes so the companion dryer has half or less as much work to do.
It is very easy for a sheet to wrap up all the other laundry inside itself so you really have one small duffel bag of wet cloth rattling around in there. Fitted sheets, and especially the extra deep-pocketed ones for modern tall mattresses are really bad about that.
The fix, as @Beckdawrek just said is something else that’s large enough to break up the ability of the bedsheet to wrap the whole thing. Large bath towels or beach towels are great. They’re also heavier and especially when wet so they move differently than does the offending bedsheet.