A painter is born
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'Here you go, Sausage. Get to it."
My Uncle Sam handed me a coffee can half-filled with light green paint and
a brush. My job was to cover the walls of a small bedroom closet.
I was 12. It was late July, and the Tigers were in first place. My buddies
in our Detroit suburb were playing a huge pickup baseball game under a warm
morning sun. The guys were in heaven. I thought I'd found hell, where the nuns
always warned I'd end up.
Uncle Sam had given me a quick lesson on "cutting in" - brushing paint into
corners - around baseboard molding and the ceiling line. I started at the top,
filling in the ceiling line and corners while standing on a shaky wooden
ladder. "Just paint," Uncle Sam said. "No one'll notice the spots you've missed
in the closet."
Since that summer in 1968, I've done all of my own painting. Interior or
exterior, you name it. I've not only grown to enjoy painting but have gotten to
be quite efficient, too. I don't work as quickly as a pro, but the finished
look ranges from as good to much better. So, since house painting is the No. 1
do-it-yourself project among Americans, I'm here to share a bit of firsthand
knowledge. I'll skip tales about spilling white- ceiling latex in a closet
during my college days. Or a more recent goof, when a quart of oil primer
soaked a section of the living-room carpet.
Every time a drop of paint goes where it's not supposed to, I can hear
Uncle Sam say, "If you're going to paint, you're going to spill. Use paper and
tape, and cover things with drop cloths."
Sam wasn't really my uncle. He was one of my Dad's best friends. He and his
wife never had children, so when my Dad died when I was 3, he became a
surrogate father to my sister and me. He helped when he could, sometimes
painting, sometimes getting our old black 1953 Ford Sedan in running condition.
He called me "Sausage" because my favorite food was Italian sausage, smothered
in green peppers and onions, between two slices of warm, Italian bread.
That July day in the closet, I was sure most of the light green paint ended
up in the right spots. Then, I looked down at the floor. Lucky for me, Uncle
Sam had covered the baseboard molding and oak-wood flooring with masking tape
and old newspaper. Paint droplets speckled the paper, and I had splotches on my
forearms, knees and one big green dot on my nose.
"A couple of more stripes on your face, and you could pass for Cochise,"
said Uncle Sam, a fan of John Wayne movies and Zane Grey books. Trim finished,
he handed me a roller. The closet took an hour or so to finish; I needed
another hour to clean up. A rag dipped in mineral spirits removed green
oil-based paint from the places it didn't belong - a little varnished woodwork
and a lot of my skin.
When I was finished, there was a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment.
It's something that keeps me coming back to virtually all my home-improvement
projects. It helped, too, that afterward, Uncle Sam rewarded me with a trip to
our favorite greasy spoon for my second-favorite food, Coney Island hot dogs.
Thankfully, those days of oil paint are long gone. Today, it's virtually
all latex, or water- based paints. When you goof, it's just a soap-and-water
cleanup.
Last month, when I painted our master bedroom, the chore was relatively
simple. The most difficult step was deciding on colors. I settled on Benjamin
Moore's Regal Matte Finish for all walls - a red-wine color called Bottle of
Bordeaux on the wall surrounding our bay window, and an off white named White
Zinfandel on the other walls. The doors, trim and woodwork got two coats of
semigloss white.
Virtually every drop of paint went where it was intended, a far cry from my
first assignment. A damp rag removed a splash of Bordeaux on the white window
sill and a few drops of White Zinfandel in a corner of the beige carpet.
Overall, I was pleased with the results. Uncle Sam is long gone, but I
suspect he would have approved, too. There are two walk-in closets to go.
They're scheduled for their makeover in the next few weeks - when my sons, 14-
year-old Matt and 12-year-old Adam, are destined for their first painting
lesson. Neither of them likes Italian sausage or Coney Island hot dogs. But
there's this pizzeria they're crazy about.
E-mail: gary.dymski@ newsday.com.
