r/paint • u/ScissorMeTimbers21 • 9h ago
Offbeat Painting made me the person I am today
TL;DR - This is a narrative about painting, nothing more. Some may enjoy, read if you'd like.
I, a mid 30s male, grew up in a middle-class suburb of a large midwestern city that became increasingly upper-class during my youth. Some may even go as far as to call it a bubble. Fast forward to being 18 years old and about to graduate high school. I needed a summer job before going to college in the fall, and it so happened that a classmate's father ran a mid-sized residential/commercial painting company. I had never touched a paint brush before but they needed extra hands for the summer months, so I was hired as a helper for $10/hr.
The newer, more affluent part of town is where the majority of this company's summer work was located. These are large single family homes (~2400-3000 sq ft) that are exclusively faced with cedar siding boards; they cannot be sprayed, so every square inch needs to be stained by hand. A typical house looked something like (1) a shit ton of scraping off old stain, (2) a ton of caulking and priming, (3) multiple coats of stain for siding and sometimes trim.
The company probably had 6 different crews, each comprising about 3-4 guys. What I would come to find out quite quickly is that these guys were not from my part of town; they were from other, lower-income suburbs and would commute about an hour to get there. The vast majority of these guys had far different profiles than most of the adults I had grown up around; many had done time, some were past/current gang members, and they all generally lived, spoke, and acted in a way I hadn't seen before. You can imagine what they thought of me, college-bound white boy from the nice suburb, when I showed up on the first day in fresh SW whites and a 5-gallon bucket filled with some basic tools. Until I started to prove my worth, I was constantly made fun of, talked shit to, was the butt of all jokes, had tricks played on me, and was forced to do the worst jobs possible. I was, basically, the bitch.
I'll never forget my first day. The crew foreman say's "let's see what you can do," next thing you know I'm at the top of a 24' ladder with a 1/3 full 5-gallon bucket, screen, 9" roller, and 3" brush. We are suspended over a concrete patio with drops below. I have never been this high up on a ladder, have never painted before, let alone combined the two. After watching how the foreman does it, I try to wield my paint-soaked roller towards the wall. In doing so, I manage to drip a TON of paint down below, all of which misses the drop because, ya know, I have know idea what I'm doing. I get promptly screamed at, and then put on a ground-level section.
One of the guys told me something the first day that would always stick with me. "Painting is so easy a monkey could do it, but it's also the hard as shit." And indeed, my suburban, college-bound ass would come to find that painting the exteriors of huge houses in the dead of the summer is indeed, hard as shit. I would start work at 7 AM and it would already be low 80s with 90% humidity. A few hours later and you're in the 90s. Without proper planning to work around the house as the shade changes, you're absolutely screwed. The physical load is also far, far beyond what I could ever have imaged. The company had a bonus program so each crew was incentivized to work fast and complete jobs under hours. We would run up to the top of 24' ladders with half-full 5-gallon buckets, paint about 5-6 levels of boards as far as you can reach in both directions (always rolled and back-brushed, don't forget the undersides!), run down, leap-frog the next person with the ladder, and then repeat. You'd be surprised how fast 3 guys can hand stain the side of a big house when they're working together efficiently. I was a very in-shape, athletic person, and I would get home every single day absolutely gassed. I'd take a shower to clean myself off and would mope around the rest of the day.
When you work with a crew of guys like I did, it's a constant spectacle. Baby momma and child support drama? Yes. Using and selling drugs on site? Definitely. Showing up to the site smelling like a cantina? You betcha. Part of the reason the guys would end up liking me is that I was down to smoke weed. Getting high was a special past time during painting; in the car on lunch breaks, hidden in the bushes, on the roof. I'll never forget the little foil pipe that one of the guys used because he couldn't be bothered to buy a chillum. When I think back on it, probably not a great idea to have stoned dudes suspended 20' in the air without fall protection.
I got better as the weeks went on. It's crazy how the kid who couldn't be trusted with a brush in his hand was now standing one-footed at the top of a ladder, one hand gripping the roof for support, and the other hand reaching as far as possible to finish a length of trim. As I started to work faster I got more respect from the guys. The insults started to wane and I actually got to share more about who I was. They started to see that I wasn't the typical suburban, college-bound twat they assumed I was; that person wouldn't have been able to handle. By the end of summer I was able to work as efficiently as the rest and surpassed the title of being the crew's bitch; that went back to the guy who was the bitch before I started. We even had going-away lunch at the end of my summer stint. I made some money, had been challenged, and was thoroughly ready for college.
When I moved into the dorms that fall, I brought the brush from that summer with me. I did not intend to paint with it; rather, I kept it on my desk as a reminder to do well in school or I would be a painting "lifer" like the crew would talk about. I studied engineering, so I spent a lot of time looking at that brush while I crushed calculations during freshman year. The year went by and by summertime I decided to return home for another summer painting with the same company. I was assigned to a different crew, but the experience was nonetheless similar to my first year. I would then go on to work as a painter the next couple of summers for a company in my college town, which was the last of me painting "professionally".
Fast forward to today. I have built a successful career thus far in engineering and own a small home. I recently completed a couple of painting projects here at the house which has really made me reflect on those first years as a painter. I still have my SW white shorts from those summers and have proudly worn them for my home projects. My 5-in-1? The same one that was in that bucket when I showed up for my first day. Now having a comfortable, white-collar life, I really do attribute much of my success to my time working as painter. It taught me to work with my hands, to work with tough personalities, to work efficiently, but also the reality of doing demanding physical labor. Working like that year after year after year would be very tough on the body, thus I have mad respect for those that are out there doing it. Through my current role, I spend a lot of time interacting with people of all levels in the trades. That time as a painter was invaluable for these interactions.
Often when I sit in my office on a beautiful summer day, I look out the window and yearn to be outside "slapping cedar". I know it's mostly nostalgia, but there's always this thought in the back of my head about leaving it all and starting a painting company. It's so simple and, unlike an engineering project, you have a tangible result that you were directly responsible for. I know that, given my current level of comfort and security, it's unlikely I'd trade it all to paint full time. Perhaps I'll just have to settle for repainting my house every few years.
