Sitting in my garage right now with all doors open and the fan blowing full force to clear out the smoke from a trash can fire. I had been using a oil-based gel stain earlier today, and while I thought the rags were dry before I discarded them, they were not. Somewhere around an hour ago, I started noticing a smoke smell in the house. First, I thought it was my neighbor's brick oven, but it kept getting stronger. Went out to the garage 15 minutes, and it was filled with thick white smoke.

I got pretty lucky, I suppose. The fire was confined to the trash can, and had burned itself out by the time I noticed it. I have 3' concrete stem walls in my garage, and keep my trash can by itself in a corner. No soot tracks on the walls or ceilings. Just a lot of white smoke now venting through the neighborhood.

By habit, I leave rags that have been used with oil-based solvents out in the yard for several hours, until they are fairly stiff, before I discard them. This was my first time using a gel stain product. The rags had sat outside for about five hours and seemed fairly stiff, dry, and inert, like the conventional stains I had used previously. But apparently that wasn't enough cure time for the gel stain. I will definitely not do that again. I got very, very lucky tonight. Learn from my poor choices!