| |
I negotiated with the local child labor to get my fence painted in record time and on the cheap. We ended up agreeing to 5$ per 8 foot section and pizza (with pepperoni and optional bacon bits), frozen treats of some sort and a case of soda pop. It went very well. These kids are about 5 years younger than the last fellows I hired and they worked much harder, and still had energy to run around at the park after finishing the job.
 As it turns out, my job foremen, ages 11 and 8, were underwhelmed with this lad's performance and cut him loose to hire 2 other young men from the neighborhood to help finish the job. The new fellows did end up covered but only in speckles (along with my trash can, the neighbor's garage siding and pretty much all the lawn, plants and gravels ... and driveway and well, everything else too).
I tried to tell them he'd promised not to paint himself again and we shook on it, but they were nonplussed. He had a lot of energy and was a very nice young man though.
  These were the job foremen. The very serious one is going to be getting the paint buckets. He's moving soon and he might be able to pick up more work later this summer. He is posing like a businessman in front of the unsightly unpainted fence. I am going to make him a flyer with this and the finished product side by side. Not only are they compact, but this one comes with a strong work ethic and no drama. That's what happens when you are all old and 11. (And have two younger siblings hanging from you ... at times literally.)
  I like to call the first photo's pose The Travoltan. I have a few of these as it seemed the default pose for fence painters. A few others stepped up to help us with lunch. Very kind of them. Also, I paid the little girl 5 cents per nail she picked out of my driveway gravel. She is now a very rich woman. She needs to be. Two days ago she found out how babies are born and has since decided she got the short end of the gender stick. "I don't want to be a girl!" I would have told her that she didn't need to have babies but in a few years she'll just feel the same way and I didn't want to explain who Aunt Flo was.
Here we have a possible workman's comp claim but as far as I can tell, he did not paint anything. And next is either a close up of a well painted fence or a rare skin disorder. (This was after a few scrubbings under the hose of course.)
I was too covered in paint myself to pull the camera out today to snap the whole finished product but this shot from my phone gives a good idea of the size of the job. I changed every broken picket and they painted them too. It looks great. I totally scored.
Oh, and I had to include this super sort video of one helper. He was not permitted to paint by all accounts but he was permitted to choose the radio station and help clean up. And dance. He did an excellent job at that. He would be a rich man but I found all of his loot in the grass and suspect he may use the lawn as his wallet. I returned it to him and he dropped half of it on the ground putting it into his back pocket. And he did not notice. Repeat this series of events at least three times. He has an amazing smile and some smooth moves though.
It's too short but it is all I have. I am making him a DVD of it so I needed to put many cool effects to give him some street cred and all.
I am beat and burnt. Also, I still need to make gates and am considering the merits of, you know, not having gates. And then there is the beach. I will be mulling over these things in depth as I sleep in tomorrow. My foreman had me up early everyday. They were sly. As if to mock our agreement of 9:30am they decided to schedule their hoot owl impression convention an hour earlier and to direct their voices at my bedroom window. Yes, shrewd and sly. And really awesome workers too.
|
| | Posted 6/23/2009 2:36 AM - 55 Views - 16 eProps - 9 comments
- share
- email
 - sent0
|
