Not This Time

  A while back, I published a post regarding a contract I had that turned out to be one of the largest and lengthiest jobs we had ever been involved in. It was two years ago that we did a complete re-make, involving a huge amount of preparation and detailed work. I was glad when it was over because I have never liked being on one job too long.
   
    On Monday, all our work went up in smoke as you can see here .
It is the house on the left, with all the exterior rail banisters. The neighbour was storing gas powered tools as well as gasoline in a shed that also contained a swimming pool and hot tub natural gas heater. The open flame on the heater ignited fumes, the shed blew up, the resulting fire engulfed a cedar hedge adjoining two houses, and my customer's house was engulfed in flame almost immediately. Fortunately, no one was hurt, but the damage has now been assessed and the house will require a complete restoration.

    As I expected, the owner contacted me today and asked me if I would do the work when it was ready for my expertise. I was prepared for her call and had my answer ready. "No."  This is a huge job and I am winding down in my business, not gearing up. It will be "new construction" and I do not handle that as I have concentrated on re-decoration for the last 25 years. I appreciated her offer and her confidence.

     I go back a long way with her family. I have worked in every home her parents ever built or lived in. I have done two houses for her. I have done her sisters, and at the present time I am working for her brother as we re-decorate his home for the second time.

     And this is the struggle I have. I have built relationships through and because of my business. I have become friends with so many of my clients over the years. And now I have to entrust the work they require to someone else. It is the saying "no" that also probably means saying "goodbye". I never thought I would struggle with that. I suppose it is the sense of being useful to people and at the same time becoming their friend. It has been so rewarding over the years that I am not having an easy time turning my back on something so valuable.
    I sit here tonight, after a hard week, with a sore back, aching knees, a nagging Charlie horse in my right leg, and too tired to go out on a Friday night. And yet, I cannot say goodbye to this life? Call me crazy, but it is true.

It Happened Right There!

This beautiful Tudor home was undergoing a massive renovation when I first came on the scene. I worked here for many weeks and got to know these people very well, too well actually. But that is another story. I remember the one really weird thing that happened here, and will never forget it. 

The master suite on the upper floor was being enlarged by incorporating another bedroom and closet to give room for a massive en suite and two walk-in closets. The floors had been ripped up and there were only open floor joists in one end of the room. The carpenter was carrying some materials across the joists when his foot slipped and came crashing through the family room ceiling below. I had just painted that ceiling and now I had to call in a drywall and texture repair guy. He came very quickly and it was soon ready for another paint job. It was perfect and you could not see where the incident had happened. 

A few days later, the  lady of the house returned from her holiday and told me she had heard that something had happened to her family room ceiling. I recounted the story and then showed her where the foot had come through and asked her if she could see where the damage had been repaired. We were standing in the adjoining kitchen, peering intently at the very spot where the damage had been done, trying to detect any telltale marks, when right at that precise moment, two feet came crashing through the ceiling, right there. I was speechless, but the carpenter was not. He was screaming in pain. He was straddling the floor joist with a load of materials to give him added weight, and he did not care much about any damage he had done other than to himself. 

When he came limping back from the hospital a few hours later, we offered to buy him a new piece of equipment. A parachute!     

Instant Change

I have an ongoing series on this blog that gives a brief description of some of the homes and characters I have worked for over the years. A full list of these posts is on the sidebar under 'Homes I Know'.

I was called to this home a number of years ago when the owners had to make some major alterations to accommodate a wheelchair. I had never met these people before and noted that the man of the house was quite a bit younger than me, and was the one in the wheelchair. I noticed he was not too adept with his transportation and soon found out that he had only come home from the hospital a few months previous. He had been a meat cutter at a local supermarket, making a good living. He loved his recreation, or at least used to.

He told me how he had been into ATV's (all terrain vehicles) and was out one weekend enjoying the trails around their cabin in the wilderness. He was not fooling around or even going fast, but turned around a bend in the trail and the front wheel hit a tree root that was jutting above the trail. The ATV flipped forward and he was thrown over the vehicle, hit a tree, and broke his neck. He was instantly paralysed from the waist down.

His words to me were, "Life is good, you are having a great time in the outdoors, doing what you love, when suddenly, in the blink of an eye, your life changes. As much as you want to take the moment back and do something differently, you cannot, and forever, your life is altered." He had tears in his eyes as he slowly and clumsily wheeled into his bedroom, where he stayed for the rest of the day.

Last Job of the Year

Thursday was my last day of work for the year 2010. It was a very difficult challenge but we got the job done and the customer is very pleased. I take some pride in being able to hang ALL types of wall coverings but I almost turned this one down. It was a rather large powder room with 11 ft. high ceilings. One of the challenges was the fact the wall covering was 54 inches wide with a pattern match. The roll was not cut accurately at the factory and we had to devise a method of matching, measuring, and cutting with zero tolerance for mistakes. I was disappointed to see that the toilet had been installed and there was no room for my ladder. There were also two 'outside' corners that present a challenge because the heavy inflexible fabric backed vinyl only goes around a corner tightly when it is almost melted with a heat gun. A second or two too much heat and the gig is up! When working with materials that are worth more than the labour to hang them, I get nervous. I had to use my many years of experience, plus every trick I had ever devised, to get the job done, but it is now behind me and I have already been paid.

This is a fantastic house inside and out. The materials and design work are first rate, not to mention the great people who own this home. It was a nice way to finish off the year, a challenge met with success.  

There Goes the Neighbourhood

This quaint little farmhouse caught my attention on Thursday as we arrived at our job. Not far from the USA/Canada border, this is a rural area with many very beautiful properties. Tomorrow you will see who the next door neighbours are. An eclectic mix for sure!  

Repeat Business

The owner of this house, Bob (not his real name) had a cousin who I went to school with. The cousin and I were friends and his dad was a professional house painter. Bob got his uncle to paint the house he owned before he built this one. When my friend's dad was half done painting the house, he quit. He was past retirement and said that his vision was just not good enough to do a nice enough job for his nephew. That is where I came in and finished the job.

Bob and his wife have been very good customers ever since. I have now painted this house twice and two others besides. This particular house is very beautiful inside. It is quite large with a full finished basement and a large swimming pool in the private back yard. They now live in a very exclusive townhouse development in the finest part of town. We, of course, decorated it for them before they moved in.

I have so many loyal customers on whom I depend for my livelihood and who I appreciate so very much. They always tell others when they are happy about having us work for them.

The new owners of the original house, the one the uncle gave up on, got my name from Bob and now they are my loyal customers. I have been back to that house at least 8 times since I painted it for Bob.     

Panic

Here is another house I worked in, however, I did much more than a decorating job here. It was on those front steps that I was standing when the customer had a heart attack and collapsed right in front of me. After calling 911, I did my rendition of CPR on him for the next ten minutes and amazingly, he survived, although he did not come around while I was working on him. No heartbeat, no pulse, no worries. Are you kidding! It was the longest sustained bout of panic I have ever experienced. Just looking at the photo gives me the 'willies'.  

Back to Houses I Have Worked In

It has been a while since I have posted a house that I have worked in. It was a project I started some time ago and have put on the back burner for a time.

This is a case where I remember the customer so much more than the house or the work I did in the house. When I first met Linda (not her real name) she lived in a modest house on the other side of town with her four daughters. Her husband was killed in an industrial accident and she was a new widow. He had left her a lot of money so she moved to this house a year or two later and I again did some work for her. By this time, only two daughters were living at home. She was still unmarried. The next time I would work for her, she would be married and living through a big renovation in a luxurious home. I heard recently that she took her own life as a result of depression. She was a wonderful Christian lady who was dealt a bad hand in life and could not overcome. I think of her often as I drive past the four different homes I worked in for her.

At a Distance

This is an unassuming house, but it has a story. I got a call from its new owner. She said we could not meet but she had the ideas and the colour scheme all ready for me so I could get the house ready for the moving date a month down the road. She gave me colour numbers and wallpaper stock numbers, and told me I could get at it whenever it suited me. The neighbour had the key and I could keep it until she and her family arrived. She had looked at the house once, bought it, and then flew back to Ontario where she and her family lived. As I recall, we only spoke one more time on the phone before her arrival date. When I finally got to meet her, it was when she and her family walked across the threshold of their newly decorated home. She was thrilled and has been a customer of mine ever since. I like operating that way. Give me the plan and then get out of my way. I know what to do.  

Recovery

This is a home on the same street as the one in Saturday's post. These people are good friends with the banker and his wife. They play cards a lot. When I estimated this job, the man of the house informed me that he was scheduled for heart bypass surgery and was expecting a call at any time. As it turned out, he was in the hospital the day we arrived. We did the whole house so were there for a week. Before we were done, he was back home. He sat very gingerly in his easy chair, holding a red heart-shaped pillow against his chest. (Those were his instructions, to keep the incision from tearing open in case he coughed or laughed too hard) He gave very precise instruction to us, his wife, and his dogs as he sat there in recovery. Normally he would have done everything himself. He was younger than me and been a teacher and was used to telling others what to do.

Another thing I remember about this place was watching the squirrels defeat the home made contraptions on the bird feeders, designed to keep the squirrels out. This was a constant irritation to the man of the house, and may have even contributed to his failing heart.

Back to the Banker's

We really enjoyed working for this couple a few years ago. He is a retired banker, one of quite a few I have worked for. This house is in a subdivision of beautiful acreages with a deep ravine along the back. You can see the trees in the background on the top edge of the ravine. There was plenty of wildlife here, including a bear. There was also bare wildlife next door. To the right of this photo is another home with a very large bathroom facing the banker's breakfast nook. He told me that in winter when it was still dark in the mornings, the lady of the house would bathe in the tub in the big bay window that had no curtains or blinds, totally oblivious to the fact that her neighbours could see everything.

"Mind you, I try not to look," he said with a straight face. He should have hid the pair of binoculars on the window sill so I would have believed him. I got a call from them last week asking if I could come back for a small job resulting from some water damage. I will wait until winter and then go early in the morning. Of course, only to get my day off to an early start.  

The Winter Olympics Connection

Our first time in this house was a large wallpaper job, yellow wallpaper with an old world theme. We got to know the single lady who lived here and discovered that she was the 'right hand man' (personal assistant) to the fellow who was the brains and inspiration behind the 2010 Winter Olympics. She worked all hours of the day contacting Olympic representatives from around the world, all in different time zones. She was on a first name basis with all the highest ranking politicians in our province. She was interesting and had an interesting house and we worked for her a few times in the years prior to the Olympics. When her boss passed away on the day that the Olympic Flame began its journey to B.C. we never heard from her again. He had been dying for some time and she told us that she would be taking care of his wife when the time came. We had made plans to do some work in her front entry but she may not even live here anymore.     

Back to Homes I Have Worked In

When a home is buried in the forest, it is not easy to get a good photo. This home is north of Mission and belongs to a single mom who is a real estate agent. She had us back several times to fix up a house that was in disrepair but had plenty of potential. The property is beautiful and after a lot of work, so is the interior of the house. Raising two teenagers is not easy for a single parent but this gal seemed to be doing quite well and by all indications, her business enabled her to have some of the better things in life, that is, things that money can buy. When I meet a single person who is by all appearances a decent human being, I cannot help but wonder what went wrong with the marriage. It sometimes comes up but if it does not, I do not ask.

I May Never Know

I am getting more calls every day for hanging wallpaper in high end homes. There are very few tradesmen who know the ins and outs of installing most of the modern wallpapers and vinyls. I learned the trade well, in the eighties, when everyone was using wallpaper. I learned all the tricks and was the "go to guy". Today, there are not many left who cut their teeth on the glory days of wallpaper. It was a well known designer from White Rock who called and asked if I could work in this house. Yes, it is all one house. I hung some very exotic black material in the powder room and a more mundane product in the en suite.

There was a very large and expensive pedestal legged soaker tub in one corner of the room and I had to somehow work around it to hang the final pieces of wallpaper. I was leaning and stretching when a tool slipped out of my hand and landed on the top edge of the acrylic tub. A neat button sized chip flew off the tub and landed about 10 feet away. My heart sunk. I retrieved the chip and placed it in the divot and it became invisible. But, true to my ethics, I immediately went to the lady of the house and explained to, and then showed her, what had happened. "No problem" said she, "we will look after it." I knew that acrylic could be repaired but if not, then I would owe her a new tub. When I got home at the end of the day, I 'googled' the tub and discovered it was a $3500.00 item. I got on the phone and insisted that I pay for the repair, in fact, I suggested that they take the cost of the repair off of my invoice for hanging the paper. I also inquired at a local supplier how much a typical repair would be. He said it would not be more that $150.00 and was actually quite simple to do. I was relieved and waited for the result. Nothing. I called back several months later and was put on hold and never did speak to the man of the house. I called a few days later and he told me he would get back to me. I called yet again and no response. My invoice was for over $500.00 and surely I would have some  money coming. Or, perhaps they had to replace the tub and they really did take care of it like his wife said. I have not pursued it since. "Leave sleeping dogs lie", I say.

Repeat Business

Most people do not realise that doing their house all at one time is much less expensive than doing it in bits and pieces. It is mostly about the efficient use of time. I cannot count the number of small projects we have done in this house over the years. There are still areas that remain undone, but they are few. The lady of the house had to clear every one of our projects with her husband who was on the verge of retirement and was not sure how much money he needed to live after he stopped working. She would eventually pay us from her meagre day care wages. She wanted desperately to do the whole house but her thinking was that her husband would not object to small amounts but would 'freak out' at the price of doing the whole project at once. He is now retired and my work there has come to an end. Oh well, it was a very long drive.

Next to the Golf Course

When I first met this businessman, Les, it was in his Professional Building where he had a large successful Insurance Brokerage. I did extensive work for him there and got to know him well, as well as his personal assistant. I remember one time we were hanging commercial vinyl wall coverings in his hallways and one of his elderly clients tripped on one of our tools as she walked past our work area. It was revealed later that this lady was hospitalized with a broken ankle. Her daughter was very upset with us and threatened a law suit. I told Les and he calmly reassured me that he had plenty of insurance to cover any issue that took place in one of his buildings. He did not have to do that and I am sure he saved me a bundle of money. 

Years later, he married his assistant and they bought this lovely home beside a golf course in the country. It needed extensive work and we spent many weeks re-furbishing the house from top to bottom. Les was not well at that point and took early retirement. He looked very ill and took a turn for the worse just after we finished the job. It was not long after that, his wife called us to tell us that Les was dying. I wrote him a letter and explained the Gospel to him because I knew he was an open minded man, but not religious, and I had come to like him a great deal over the years. I received a call back from his wife saying that they had many, many cards and letters from friends and relatives but it was my letter that they cherished the most, and that yes, Les had looked after this issue before he died, only days later. 

He had so much money, a beautiful house, expensive and fun cars, and a wife that was the envy of every man who ever met her, and in the end, he only had one thing left that was of any importance. His new found faith.   

The Pipe Man

Many years ago in the days of wallpaper on all the walls, busylizzy and I papered this entire house from top to bottom. It had been newly renovated and was quite a sight to behold. The design and layout of this home as well as the decor is very classy and professional. What you cannot see is the swimming pool, the golf greens, and the automotive hobby shop where vintage cars are restored. We got to know these people very well and a few years ago I was called to come and modernize the decor, throughout the entire house. The quality wallpaper was in amazingly good condition and it was not only a huge job removing it all, but it hurt to tear down our good workmanship. We spent many weeks here but the end result was a totally modernized home and very happy client. We were treated royally with regular coffee breaks and good visits. The man of the house was recovering from some very serious throat cancer and we noticed a distinct change in his personality, for the better, since the first time we worked for him. Many homes we have worked in over the years bring fond memories but this one is in the top ten.  

This photo belongs to the post of a few days ago. It is the front view of the home with the ice arena in the back yard.

Hidden Away

A few days ago we did a small job in Glenn Valley and we took 56th Ave, the scenic route. It had been a while since I had been down this road and I was delighted to see this little display put up by one of those farmers who has plenty of money and time. The home we worked in was at the end of a very long, steep driveway and I took a video of us going up and then after, going down. I will have to work out a way that I can display the video on this blog. A little old lady lives in the dense forest at the top of the drive, all by herself, surrounded by 20 acres of wildlife and trees and there is not a neighbour in sight. She is selling it this summer and needed a bit of an up-grade so we hung some wallpaper in her bathroom that she had purchased 15 years ago. :) The house is west coast design with 7 or 8 levels, tall and narrow, with vaulted ceilings, narrow stairwells, and all clad in dark rough cedar in the interior and the exterior. I am thinking that if somebody buys her home it will be for the property and not the house although I am sure it was very nice in the day when such architecture was popular. We were surprised at how warm the day  was when we exited the dense forest at the bottom of her driveway.  

Massage With a View

It was more that a year after I gave these people a quote on re-painting their house, that they called and gave me the go ahead. I knew them from church and busylizzy had a connection with the lady of the house and her sister. Apart from being a well built home, the best feature of this residence is the fabulous view from both floors facing east. (the back of the house) Very few neighbours make this a very quiet and peaceful area with a lot of room for entertaining or kids to run around in. One of the rooms I did was the exercise and massage room on the lower level. I discovered that she was a qualified masseuse so I booked a massage, in fact I booked two massages. For the record, busylizzy was with me both times. I gave back some of the profit I made on the job but it was worth it. Both times I was limber for the rest of the day and slept like a baby at night.

Would You Like That With Ice?

This is a cute little (did I say little!) country home in which I hung a lot of wallpaper. I was impressed the minute I walked into this house and saw all the classy original ideas that obviously took a lot of money to implement. At that time, these people were young with small children. There were horses and then there was something for the boys. Behind the house is an ice arena. Yes, you read right. I could not get the angle of shot I wanted due to privacy rights, but there is an old Amish buggy in the driveway. A delightful place in which to work and delighful people to work for.                                            

This is a property next door and I have no idea who owns it and I have not worked here. I just thought it was kind of pretty so I took a photo of it. These homes are on a high ridge overlooking a prairie valley and the views are magnificent.