Every once in awhile I come across a difficult area to paint or get access too. Generally, it is a small area of a couple of feet of soffit, or the very top of an overhang above an impossibly sloped roof. Or in this case..... 4 feet of fascia 36 feet above a garage roof. Not that difficult really, but we just couldn't get at it without doing something REALLY stupid with the ladders. So, we called 5 or 6 scaffolding companys and got the run around from all of them because the job was too small or they were too busy etc. I couldn't even get someone to come out a simply give me some advice about how to get at it......Frustrated, I ended up calling one more out of the way company with not much hope. The guy said that they don't really deal with residential stuff, and that he handles more of the large scale condo sites, etc. Ready to hang up and go home to ponder such a stupidly simple problem, he saved the day. He had his flatbed loaded up and was passing through the area in about an hour. An hour later, a large burly Harley Davidson tattooed Gorilla of a man unloaded three levels of industrial scaffolding and set it up BY HIMSELF in less than 20 minutes. For $Free$. He then informed me that he'd be back in 3 hours to pick it up, apparently he needed lunch.........I realize it may be overkill....but ya should have seen the customers face when he came home and saw this setup, all to paint 4 feet of fascia.....brilliant. Oh, and I tracked down the scaffolding guys office, and dropped off 2 bottles of wine for the help......

Insta-spray booth...........had to spray a ton of doors, shelves, and crown on a house, so I converted their basement into my own personal spray booth.............




Sadly, after sanding, spraying, sanding, spraying, more sanding and spraying and making the shelves & MDF practically look like a glass finish, the finish carpenter (who never actually "finish" anything!) mangled it all on installation, and I had to end up brush & rolling another finish coat to half of it and it ended up looking like CRAP!!! Ah well, just blame the drywaller, it's always their fault anyhow!!!

Not much to report as of lately in my world. I've been spending the last week or so just taking it easy and collecting equipment around town and getting it back into winter storage, as well as final touchups and loose-ends for the exterior season. All in all not a bad way to recharge to batteries. On the other hand, I'd like to get as much interior work done before the 2nd week of November because I'm going to Mexico (with my wife, of course) for a week or two. Who knows how motivated I'll be when I get back. The other reason I want to get as much work in is that I've finally got 2 good helpers whom I'd like to hold onto for as long as possible. You know, the rare type who are stable, reliable, & possess the least common of the senses....common sense. Not only that but they don't cost me a fortune. It seems that I can't even get entry level, non-skilled labourers for less than $12 per hour. College kids during the summer even. Two years ago we could get them by the dozen doing masking, scraping, cleanup type work for $8 to $10 per hour. Not that I don't mind paying for good help, but it just seems harder to find good people who want to start at the bottom and work their way up. I'm happy to teach and train anyone if they are interested in the trade,even as a fall-back, but if some of these kids start out making a decent wage (for non-skilled work), what's their motivation, and what's my leverage??? Anyways, they're good, we get along and they work hard.........