Kinsler: At least I wore rubber gloves this time

“Our upstairs window looks like an art project,” Natalie said.

And it did, being yet another unfortunate episode in my 35-year career dealing with a product known as Great Stuff canned polyurethane foam. You shake the can, screw on a long nozzle, poke said nozzle into whichever gap you’d like to fill and seal, and squeeze the little trigger. A stream of creamy yellowish foam gushes out of the nozzle, and it looks, well, great, for it will harden into a fire-resistant, waterproof mass that resists intrusion by water or air. It is satisfying to watch the foam fill and permanently seal a troublesome area.

But then the fun begins, because Great Stuff is also tough, and sticky, and cannot be dissolved by any known substance once it has hardened. And it expands. This last is particularly amusing because after you drill a hole in a drafty windowsill and pump a half-can into the unknown caverns beneath, it’s never clear what’s going to happen.

What happened this time was that the Great Stuff expanded to fill the void behind and below the window sill and then, having run out of room, exuded from gaps I hadn’t realized were there. It then continued to expand until great yellowish globes formed around the window frame, engulfing and digesting anything in their path. As usual — this has happened every winter for years — I panicked, grabbing some protective newspapers only after the foam threatened the carpeting. For he who releaseth the Great Stuff from its can must surely learn that the puny efforts of man are powerless to stop its inexorable flow.

At length volcanic activity ceased and all lay quiet. The lower half of the window, the wall below it, the baseboard below that and the hastily-laid newspaper below that looked like the United States Air Force had foamed the runway for a wheels-up landing.

Most of the solidified foam broke off the window frame easily enough, but where it had contacted the wood it took the white paint with it, leaving behind highly-attractive islands of dark brown. I must also deal with that spot on the carpet.

The long-suffering Natalie must supervise the repainting job, for authorities in the field have long ruled that M Kinsler should never be left alone with a paint brush or a caulking gun. Or, for that matter, a can of Great Stuff.

But I’m fascinated with it all the same. I bought my first can shortly after I purchased the Beloved 1964 Econoline Van in 1981. The foam efficiently filled gaps and voids in the body that admitted the chill winter wind. It did the same for discontinuities in the walls of drafty Kinsler Hi-Fi Service locations in New Haven and Pittsburgh. Thus the Econoline tooled around the streets sporting yellow-brown excrescences on its body. And there’s a window in one of my former shops that can never open again.

Natalie silently surveyed my latest effort. “I love you anyway,” she said.

Mark Kinsler is a science teacher from Cleveland Heights who lives in an old but somewhat less drafty house in Lancaster with Natalie and four cats who mercifully avoided the sticky foam. He can be reached at kinsler33@gmail.com.