The Paint Brush

In the past week, I have been doing some painting inside the old homestead. We are repurposing a room, changing it from our grandson's bedroom to an office/den space, obviously something we need in our old age.

I am generally a hands-on kind of guy. I do my own home repairs, painting, landscaping and generally all the things that come along with owning a home. Okay, I will generally forego appliance repair due to the nature of what they are and the parts they require. You can't just run to a hardware store to replace the icemaker in the refrigerator.

As I was cleaning out my paint brush, a thought occurred to me: much of this type of skill is being lost in the more recent generations of our population. I know some of this simply because in my real-life work, I used to run hardware stores and I could see the level of competence slip over the years. So, what is it about the paint brush?

It's simple really, we have become a tribe of disposers. Buy a paint brush, use it one time and instead of cleaning it, we throw it away. Doing things the right way has become too time consuming. I have often said if people actually read the back of a paint can and painted their walls how the paint manufacturer said it should be done, the only people who would paint would be professional painters.

The weekend project of painting a room is actually a project that takes the entire weekend if you do it right. Too many skip the prep work which is what actually gives the project the perfect end result you really want. The first step is gathering the proper tools to do the work. That in and of itself takes time. Drywall needs to be patched, stains washed away, repairs have to dry (if using spackle) and then sanded smooth. All this takes time before one can even begin to apply the paint.

Finally, the cleanup has to take place. That in and of itself takes time. Several of my current paint brushes are in the five to ten year old range. Buy a good brush and clean it after every use and it will last that long. Some things just can't be rushed if you want your tools to last and the project to turn out correctly. Too many times over the years I spoke to customers in my stores that always want to rush the project just to get it done. That's how you end up with poor results, and the more poor results you get, the more you don't want to do another project and then you rush that next project, and you get a repeating cycle of poor results.

And then what happens, you give up and look to pay someone else to do the job. This cycle of 'good enough' or 'don't want to fool with this', leads to a generation of folks who lose the skills to do even the simplest tasks. Think about, how many times have you seen jokes of memes about a grown adult who can't change a flat tire? (I could have typed 'grown-ass' in that last sentence, but I detest that expression). That is just the simplest example of what I mean.

The bottom line of this is, try anyway. It will take longer than you hoped it would to do your project, but the next time, it won't. You would have learned something along the way to shorten the time and make the next time easier. I still learn things as I go. And it also saves money. Would you rather buy the supplies to paint your room and spend $200 for everything and take the weekend, or pay someone $500 when you could have done it yourself?

It's also quite fulfilling to do a project yourself and have it turn out great, and yes, I still clean all my paint brushes after every paint job.