Why aren't there more women in construction trades?
I really don't know.
Pay is MUCH better than your average undereducated chick-type job in retail.
You get stronger.
You can get a great tan.
Men really dig it. In 1981, my then-partner & I painted a formal ballroom-type space in a very popular bar in Los Gatos, CA. It took us about a week, and each evening after we got done we'd slide on down to the bar to have a few drinks and listen to the band. Daubed with paint, wearing baggy whites, no makeup and messy hair, we got hit on ten times more often than the made-up Barbie Valley girl chicks. It was almost tedious trying to repel unwanted advances.
Does anyone remember those crinkly silk dresses popular back then, that you were supposed to twist up and tie in a knot in between washings? I had a turquoise one, a mini-dress tank style thing. I kept it behind the seat of my 1964 Ford F250 (oil bath, low geared, 292, three on the tree, if you don't know what I mean you are too young!) pickup truck. Along with some high strappy shoes and a mascara wand. Black, L'Oreal, because I am worth it.
Anyhow, so I'd be all ready for anything. :)
Oh, did I mention 20-something rough carpenters in faded denim shorts, shirtless with a tan, muscles, glinting chest hair and a toolbelt....?
And you learn cool skills in construction.
And you can get some serious muscle without trudging off to a gym.
Chicks dig it too.
You get to go all different places for work, instead of the same old same old every day.
I already mentioned sweat-glistened tanned carpenters in shorts and work boots, didn't I....?
Anyhow, why don't more women do this, at least for a summer or in between other jobs? Sure, if you have a JD or MBA or experience in something else you love, do that, of course. But without degrees and experience in other fields, why do so many women restrict their opportunities to low paid, boring clerking type jobs? And then bitch about discrimination - something largely absent, at least in the trades.
I am a really lousy feminist, by the way - absolutely un-PC.
Time on my hands.
Just had a last minute job cancellation, so much of this week is free. A tree fell on the homeowners' house and they decided to do the costly roof repair and get the painting done in a month or so. I was underbid on another job I thought I'd get, so that's out too.
Yay! Free time! I've not been able to fill up my week in such short notice. Though it's too bad, the truck needs a new alternator, property tax bill is due any day and I have agility classes to pony up for this evening. So a practically income-free week isn't really the best thing. I'll be able to catch up on some work around my own house, which was built in 1938 and always needs something fixed.
This is a downside to being self employed. Seems I'm either working seven days a week, or unexpectedly having time on my hands. Makes it hard to budget time and money, and I learned long ago not to give exact dates for starting or finishing a job unless I know for sure I can do it.
All sorts of things can delay a job.
Weather!
Another sub is slow. The painter often has to rely on other work to be done before we can do our thing - drywall, carpentry, gutters, whatever.
Client changes their mind about a color and it has to be re-done.
Client either adds more work to the job "as long as you're here...." or decides not to do something already planned.
Helper can't make it to work.
You remove wallpaper only to find it was about the only thing keeping crumbling plaster or rotted drywall attached to the studs. Add another two days for extensive repairs.
And so on.
So rather than annoy people by not being able to start or complete a job within a specific time frame, I'm often intentionally vague. "Oh, it will take three or four days." "I can start sometime in the week of the 10th, I will call you that weekend when I know for sure."
The exterior I finished last week is on the market. Here's the
realtor's page - her photos don't do it justice, the interior is gorgeous! I painted it a couple of years ago and it's decorated beautifully.
The back was a pain in the ass - look at all those windows; every one had to be masked. The side of the house not shown was too high for my 32' ladder plus it was on a hill. I had to borrow the homeowner's big truck and put the ladder ON it, levelled with boards to compensate for the hill. It was in the 90s that day, slow going and I wasn't 100% comfortable with the ladder set up. Really hard work and I was glad to get that job finished!
Off to do about three hours of painting, then nada until Monday. Gah.
Two Dykes and a Faggot.
Funny thing. Much like many people assume a male hairdresser is gay, many assume women in "non-traditional" jobs are lesbians.
When I very, very first started painting, it was with a woman I met at a
Scientology party in California. Oh, what a fun crowd Scientologists are. Not. We were the only two DBs - in Scientology-speak, this is an acronym for Debased Bodies. ie, non-believers. Anyhow, so we hit it off, got drunk and decided to start a painting company for fun.
Several months later, our very first real employee was a tall hunky California-surfer dude named Ross.
Not only did people assume he was our boss instead of the other way around because he was a man - they assumed Gail & I were a couple, and nobody guessed Ross was quite light in the loafers and lived with Manuel, his high school sweetheart.
So, we were all tossing around possible company names one day. Came up with quite a few. My favourite - one remembers the dumbest stuff - was "Two Dykes and a Faggot Painting Co."
You know, I kind of wish we had! I was interviewed by the San Jose Mercury News - in 1980, woman-owned trades were quite rare. Still are. They did a big front page feature in the Saturday Home Section with a really dorky photo of me standing in front of a house, paint brush in hand.
T'would have been fun to see how they would have written up the company name.
Don't paint the Miata!
Once upon a time, when Mazda Miatas were hot new cars on the market, one of my employees (and I, by default) made a big boo boo. We had prepped a little wooden ranch style house, and the next day Greg and a helper went over there to spray it with grey oil stain.
When spraying a house one has to be careful - the excess spray can drift and sprinkle things - lawn furniture, shrubs, people's cars...if it's a still, dry day and one is using water-based material, it dries in the air and just leaves harmless paint dust. However, if it's breezy, humid, or the material is oil based, it doesn't dry and can stick to things 30 feet away.
Like brand new black Mazda Miatas.
Oops.
On the other side of the hedge, the neighbor's new car sat sparkling in the driveway. Greg didn't see it, and I should have told him to be vigilant. We'd either have people move vehicles, or cover them completely with clean plastic sheeting.)Neighbor came out, saw her car sprinkled with grey oil stain and went ballistic. Understandably so. Greg gave her my number (sometimes it's great to be able to pass the buck) and she called me, very upset. I did have insurance, apologised up one side and down the other, told her I'd pay for having her car buffed, whatever it took. Told her, get estimates, call me back and we'll go from there. She calmed down and we hung up amicably.
Never heard from her again. Isn't that wierd? I didn't even have her phone number (this was before caller ID.) I went by the house and left a note on her door. I also mentioned it to the woman whose house we just painted because I figured, better she hear it from me than a pissed off neighbor!
Not a word. I always wondered, did she die, or total the car the next day, or win the lottery, or what?
So, I lived happily ever after without having to pay for buffing out her car (that stuff wouldn't have just washed off.)
Sometimes the universe works in mysterious ways.
Ladder cleverness and lookit the view!
When you need to get up on a roof which is too steep to safely work on - this is one way to get there. You need someone else to stand at the top of the ladder for weight. Then you go up, like this....
While your bad, bad helper sneaks your camera up the ladder with her and takes unflattering photos of your bum.
Here's a view from the top - 32' ladder wouldn't get all the way high enough and I had to trim with a brush on an extension pole, teetering on my tippy toes.
Another view!
And here is my bad, bad helper. Her name is Kat and I make her do all the dirty work but she is learning fast.
KILL KILL KILL KILL!
When I was eight years old, I was swarmed by bees and stung quite badly. For years & years, I was really scared of them - even a photo of a bee gave me goosebumps. I'm not that girly about bugs and snakes and stuff at all, I'll pick up about anything that won't bite or sting. Unless it is black and yellow and has a stinger.
Anyhow, dealing with wasps is just a part of the job, painting outside. Over the years, I've become quite brave. Because I KILL KILL KILL KILL them all. Yes! There's foaming spray that shoots 25' and makes them drop to the ground wiggling their nasty little legs in throes of horrible pain and death! Then I stomp on them! I dance on their little striped bodies until they're little black and yellow smears! I cackle! I ululate, even! KILL! KILL! YEAH!
No really. I am usually a harmless, gentle, little fuzzball and move spiders and bats and won't disturb bird nests when I'm painting. I buy employees lunch on Fridays. I'm nice to clients' pets and children and still cry when I think about Bambi's mom.
My helper and I removed 18 great big shutters from a house last week. Every single one had masses of those little black & yellow fuckers nesting behind them. I went through a case of wasp spray (the foaming kind is best because it weighs their dying bodies down, so they drop instead of flying at you which isn't nice when you're on top of a 32' ladder.)
Awesome carnage. :~)
I don't need no stinkin' scaffolding.
I paint so many houses with big-ass tall foyers that last year my helper & I were going to put "Foyers "R" Us" on the side of my truck! Most take one or two days. Maybe three if there's ceilings, crown molding and trim to paint.
About every other house the homeowner exclaims "I thought you'd need scaffolding, how do you get up there?"
Handy dandy little tools and a couple of ladders. Being a bit of an acrobat (a previous crew called me Monkey-Woman and I wore the moniker with pride) helps too. Like the handy-dandy brush extender - you can adjust and angle a brush any way you need to with that. The step leveller thingie is handy too, and much safer than piles of phone books.
I owned scaffold way back when I used to paint lots of Victorian homes. Now there, it really came in handy - you can spend all day working on about 10 square feet of exterior siding and trim.
I finished up this house last week - it's the one in the previous post with the faux marble wall. Looked marvellous - deep foresty, mossy colours and a red kitchen.
PS, it's not OSHA-safe to wear Tevas on the jobsite. Well bite me. Just saying.
Faux!
Here's an
article I wrote for an online painting & decorating magazine. It's really a basic overview and tips; I don't go into specific techniques.
It's difficult to describe "how to" in print, but many techniques are easy and really quite dramatic. Most paint store and big box home centers have whole displays for faux. Booklets with instructions, videos and all the tools you'll need. Check for faux painting workshops - one of my local Sherwin Williams stores has them every few months and I've seen them advertised at Home Despot.
Paint is really forgiving - experiment and have fun!
If you don't want to try yourself, call an expert. We appreciate the business. :)
You can supersize any of the photos here to see more detail, just click on the pic.
