A New Year

What’s next?

I trust many of us in the trades asked ourselves this question as we peered across the blackjack table of a new year. The dealer is showing a 2. Do you play your chips or do you double down?

This is a heady analogy coming from one who just approached the first blackjack table of my life while on a recent road trip to move my son to California. For my son, an 18 year old, it is deemed a rite of passage in Minnesota to partake in some gambling at the Native American owned casinos. It was truly an afterthought when he and I realized that my lesson in blackjack, during our overnight stay in Nevada, may have been illegal for him since their casinos are not owned by a sovereign nation and may have different age laws.

Suffice to say, neither of us is wanted in Nevada. Next, we managed to cross the finish line into California on expired license plate tabs, where to our relief, we noticed the California plates did not have extra stickers attached and maybe no one would notice yet another misdemeanor.

You see, there was a minor list of things he forgot to take care of during his home stay that were revealed during the trip. One never really knows what’s next; when in the company of a teenager or when owning a business, and certainly not in blackjack. I would venture a guess that the old rules will not apply to the game we now face. Price sensitivity is not going away soon. We will be challenged to persuade our potential customers of our value.

On the up side, the longer people wait to do maintenance on their homes, the more they are suppressing their appetite for such maintenance and improvements. Perhaps we can hope for a deluge of pent up need to spend at some point. In the meantime, it’s critical to keep fresh ideas rolling as we face these times together.

It’s a new game baby! Signet Painting is here for you as you look around your space and ask, “What’s next?”

The Art and Science of Residential Painting

The customer of a residential contractor is a general contractor, an interior designer, a cabinet maker or a homeowner and on any given day, at any given moment, these customers expect us to have answers for questions like these:
 

Can you make it look like vintage wallpaper? Can my brick home be painted? Why did the paint peel on the walls in my stairwell? Do you know which wood finishing product to use for cabinetry my clients chose to have laminated with an exotic wood veneer for their pool house?
 

Does an accountant know the answers? A chef or a veterinarian? No, because the answers come with years of learning a trade that involves chemistry, physics, geometry, meteorology and by the way, an artistic eye for color theory and a natural talent for application. And yet, residential painting is often an undervalued service in our country.
 

One of my favorite Dilbert cartoons underscores how we can contribute to our own flagging worth by illustrating a wood chuck posing as a contractor who has just submitted an estimate. Dilbert reads the estimate back to the contractor by reiterating that it says he’ll do the work for a chance to gnaw on wood.  To which the contractor replies, “Too high?”
 

We painting contractors often compete in a chance-to-gnaw-on-wood market, when the truth is that we represent a trade requiring knowledge in art and science, a trade whose work is most visible to the eye, a fact that sets us apart from all other building trades. And that deserves recognition.
 

On this 125th anniversary of the oldest painting trade association in the country, congratulations PDCA (Painting and Decorating Contractors of America) Painting Contractors! We are the best.