Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, September 28, 1994 TAG: 9409280027
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BEN BEAGLE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
In addition, it would be nice if they would send money and some professional painters who aren't afraid of falling off ladders.
I'm sure there's a market specialist with the El Bondo Paint Co. who has us in the computer:
"Looky here, Agnes, those poor jokers on Happy Highfields Road have to paint again."
This is all the result of what I have come to call the Beagle Empirical Theory of Geometric Paint Failure and Diminishing Returns.
Simply stated, my theory says that no sane person ever tries to "touch up" any part of the of the house. It's simply not possible to do this.
Recently, for example, we were in the front yard - which we hardly ever visit except to cut the grass and pick up parts of trees after ice storms.
For reasons we shall see immediately, it's not a good practice to fool around in your front yard too much. Except after dark when you can't see how ratty the paint on the shutters looks.
Somebody said, and these are the exact words as I recall them:
"Whoo-ha, would you look at how ratty the paint on those shutters looks."
No man or woman with a reasonable amount of intelligence ever tries to paint shutters while they are still affixed to the house - especially if they are black and rest of the paintable house is a fanciful Dove Gray.
The theory kicks in, and we take the shutters down to reveal that the caulking on all the windows is shot and the paint behind the shutters is a different color.
We scrape and repaint the shutters in the basement - which is nice work because you're not hanging, terrified, from this aluminum ladder that might not support your weight. You're also not dropping paint on the Dove Gray siding.
We found other flaws in the Dove Gray itself, and when we patched them, we discovered that the half-gallon we had left over from the last painting was a lot, well, Dove Grayer than the paint that has been through a blizzard, three ice storms and several droughts.
This means total repaint. No touch up. It tempts a man to throw himself off an aluminum ladder and have an end to painting and other earthly woes.
Before I did that, however, the El Bondo Paint Co. would get a nasty note asking why in hell it can't make a paint that will keep shutters from looking ratty.
by CNB