My brother-in-law has worked as a lifeguard since he was a teenager. It's quite a close knit group of people, some of whom have known each other for decades. The older guys mostly work part-time, of course. One of them, who I've met a couple of times, is quite the character.
Maybe 20 years ago he had an old beat-up car that he decided to paint. He bought a whole crate of spray cans and headed off to the beach early to use the empty parking lot as his "booth".
This smaller parking field is much coveted by lifeguards and beachgoers alike as it is just steps from the sand. The other, larger lots require a much longer walk.
This fellow masked his car to some degree and got the spraying done before he reported in for his shift on an unusually windy day. Six or so hours later he went back to the car.
To hear my brother-in-law tell it, his friend had the only sand-textured auto paint job on Long Island.
If this was Jones Beach and had it been 40 years ago, it's possible that I kicked some sand on the guy's car. ;-) The hours I spent at Jones Beach as a young kid with my family and then with my friends as a teenager probably total into the thousands.
Growing up in Queens (technically inside NYC, but physically on Long Island ) I remember a lot of my friends taking their souped up cars to Earl Scheib for painting. I'm amazed to see that they are still around. We nicknamed t hem Oil Slob because of the low-quality paint jobs they did. They had an $8
9 special where you did all of the prep work, drove the car over to them an d all they did was a quick mask job and the painting.
One of my friends apparently hit a mud puddle on the way to the shop and wh en he got his car back the rear rocker panels looked a little rough. After closer inspection he realized that the shop had painted right over the dirt .
I remember a lot of my friends taking their souped up cars to Earl Scheib for painting. I'm amazed to see that they are still around. We nicknamed them Oil Slob because of the low-quality paint jobs they did. They had an $89 special where you did all of the prep work, drove the car over to them and all they did was a quick mask job and the painting.
You must be younger than me. I remember $29.95 I'll paint any car any color! That was around 1960.
One of my friends had his car done a dark blue. From a distance, it did not look too bad, but when you opened the doors, the jambs were the old green. That would have been extra.
We had a pretty eccentric neighbor when I was a young boy. He was not easily swayed by the opinion of others, and sometimes not by common sense. He liked to paint things; he spent hours painting the flowers on the balusters of his wrought-iron railings in multiple bright colors, for instance. He also had an inordinate fondness for Durham's Rock Hard Water Putty, which he seemed to have cases of on hand at all times. He also had cans of paint - possibly hundreds - in every color imaginable in his rabbit warren of a garage.
It was the Sixties and he had a behemoth of a station wagon that must have been '50s vintage. He was forever touching it up and sculpting new fender bits out of - yes really - the aforementioned putty. I can't remember the original color for certain, but I think it was an aquamarine hue.
At some point he decided - against his general habit - to take the car for a "professional" job. You guessed it: the Earl Scheib "leave the windows open and we'll do the interior for free" special.
It came back red; a fire-engine red that was an odd match with the pastel interior. But apparently our neighbor detected a flaw or two. From the dark depths of his garage came red oil-based wall paint and a one-inch brush. He touched up a spot here, a spot there, another bit over there, but still managed to find more places that didn't look quite right. The more he touched up, the more flaws he found. He was at this for hours, after which he had - and I swear I'm not making this up - painted the entire car with house paint.
But it wasn't as attractive a finish as you might expect. :)
Because he had not originally set out to paint the whole car, he had thousands of 1" "touch-up" brushstrokes in every conceivable direction. It looked almost exactly like the finger-painting kids used to do in kindergarten, except that it was all one color.
There are too many stories about this fellow for me to recount them all here, but I'll add this:
He used to conduct most of his painting activities in the shared community driveway behind our (attached) houses, which was paved with asphalt. After a while he had drips of every shade of paint on the section that was behind his garage. He decided it would be a neighborly gesture to paint (yes, really) his portion of the driveway black. Of course, beyond the fact that house-paint was not designed to paint asphalt, the jet-black paint he used was a great deal darker than the weathered dark grey of the driveway.
Where abouts did you live? I lived in a block of row houses in Flushing, bu t we all had our own driveways in front, with garages under the house. The tops of the driveways next to the sidewalks were flat, then the single car length driveway sloped steeply down to the garage. Always a hair raising ex perience! Imagine parking in a driveway that was barely one car length long and dropped a full story in that length! Lot's of brake and gear when tryi ng to get up and out onto the street.
As years went on and cars got lower, many of my neighbors had their drivewa ys ripped out and redone so the slope started right at the sidewalk, elimin ating the sharp drop off. We never did ours because we never parked in the garage after Dad and Grandpa built a room for the 4 kids to study in from t he interior 2/3 of the garage and left the outside 1/3 for storage.
The next block over did have a common driveway (alley) and garages under th e houses and accessed from the rear. 2 sloped entrances to the alley off th e side streets to a flat, block long "driveway" behind the houses. Lots of fun for skateboards made from a piece of scrap wood and a roller skate spli t in two and attached with some bent over nails.
I grew up in Glendale, Queens. There are still houses in the neighborhood that are arranged in both ways you describe. Our block had the community driveway. It was great for us kids. The garages were way too small for 1960s cars (the houses were built in the '30s) and fewer families had more than one car to begin with, so almost all the cars stayed parked on the street out front.
The back alley was our playground. Cars coming through were rare, and they drove very slowly. We played basketball, handball, tag and catch, drew "skelly" boards with chalk on the pavement, ran races, and visited each others houses, all within earshot of our parents. It was a little narrow for touch football.
I lived for about 17 years in three locations in Flushing.
, but we all had our own driveways in front, with garages under the house. The tops of the driveways next to the sidewalks were flat, then the single car length driveway sloped steeply down to the garage. Always a hair raisin g experience! Imagine parking in a driveway that was barely one car length long and dropped a full story in that length! Lot's of brake and gear when trying to get up and out onto the street.
veways ripped out and redone so the slope started right at the sidewalk, el iminating the sharp drop off. We never did ours because we never parked in the garage after Dad and Grandpa built a room for the 4 kids to study in fr om the interior 2/3 of the garage and left the outside 1/3 for storage.
r the houses and accessed from the rear. 2 sloped entrances to the alley of f the side streets to a flat, block long "driveway" behind the houses. Lots of fun for skateboards made from a piece of scrap wood and a roller skate split in two and attached with some bent over nails.
Are you the kid in the knee socks?
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Mom always got made when we stole her candles to fill the bottle tops.
For me, it was 28 years in three locations except for 1 year when Dad's job took us to Milwaukee. Most of the time was spent living across from Queens College. You couldn't find a parking spot within 2 blocks of your house du ring school days, but could line up twenty 18 wheelers on the weekends. We had to get special dispensation from the police department to block our own driveway, but that only worked for one car. Whoever got home first got to park there until Dad got home, then we had to move to wherever we could fin d a spot.
When we moved in, the college land across from our house was woods. Then it became a grass field that the college used for sports. They fenced it in, but hey, that wasn't going to keep us kids out and they didn't really care. Frisbee, football and sledding was the norm. Even as busy as the area was during the day, a huge green space was a pretty spectacular view for a hous e in Flushing.
A few years after Dad sold the house (in '87) they built a glass and steel building in the field, right up next to the street. That certainly changed the view from the living room window.
I left NYC 35 years ago and never looked back. I'm back to looking at woods from my living room window.
I can't remember the name of the gun... Meyer, perhaps? It is a $125 knock off of a Binks HVLP that was recommended to me by the local paint equipmen t store. I bought it to shoot primer, but like the finish it left so much I use it now for everything. It has a 20 oz top cup, 1.2mm needle size, an d works great for oil based products.
I shoot the BIN unthinned, and hit the SW product about 10% with thinner un less in the dead of summer.
It's awful though, when you think about it. Not every client is some tight wad smartass that thinks they know better than you. They are trying to do something good, trying to do something for themselves, then some moron come s along and tells them how do to it completely wrong. Yes, they can do the ir cabinets in a day, but they are ruined after that. The amount of work i t would take to do anything besides layer on more latex would make it cheap er to replace the cabinets altogether.
I appreciate that, and back at you! It has been increasingly hard to find folks that want you to "do it right". Even most of my well heeled clients seem to be in dollar saving mode these days, and have been for some time. "Good", is good enough. The sad thing is that most folks these days have n o idea of what to expect quality-wise, so unless the finished job is awful, they have no idea what they are looking at.
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