Can you spy the Painter's Wife?

Table Refinishing for the Holidays

Now is a great time to think about getting the kitchen or dining room table freshened up for the holidays. Check out this recent refinish:

During refinishing

Table Base Before

Is It Time for a Cool Change?

Does anyone else remember that song by the Little River Band? "Well I was born in the sign of water/ And it's there that I feel my best..." If you don't know the song, you're probably just so wonderfully young. You probably don't remember Gilligan's Island at 4p.m. and then The Flintstones, just after supper (eat your peas!).

But for the rest of us, alas, our life is "so pre-arranged" and we know that it's time...for a groovy change. See this before and after shot from one of Signet Painting's kitchen makeovers for a client with great taste, in Maple Grove:

Before the Signet Painting Makeover

And the song continues, "There's lots of those friendly people, showing me ways to go, and I never want to lose that inspiration:

After

One more beautiful, sturdy set of oak cabinets saved from the landfill.

Voile!

Minnesota Monthly Factoid Edited

http://www.minnesotamonthly.com/

If you spend $$$ on a kitchen FACELIFT - cabinets, countertops etc. you will recoup 83% of your costs in a sale. Average cost: 20,000.00
However, if you spend $$$$$ on a kitchen REMODEL - you will only recoup 62% of your costs. Average cost 123,000.00. But originally, they reported an 8% recoup - then they printed a correction the following month which makes a bit more sense. Nevertheless, think about that facelift:

Here's an idea: http://www.refinishyourcabinets.com/

Painting Mother's Day with only 135 Calories

This is a deviation from gorgeously painted rooms and I confess there are shades of the Pioneer Woman (but why should she have the corner on the 'famous blogger' market?)  The Painter made this blueberry blintz for me. Ok, we made it together - and after only two tries! Take a look:

I can't take credit for the recipe, that would be the Slimgenics cookbook. But here it is:

1/4 C. blueberries (I used frozen/unsweetened)
2 oz. 1% cottage cheese (that's relatively a 1/4 cup)
1 large egg (whisked) Don't put it in with the cottage cheese, don't do it...
1 packet Equal
1/4 tsp. cinnamon

Wash blueberries and sweeten them with 1/2 packet Equal. Whip cottage cheese and the other 1/2 pack Equal in blender with a few drops of skim milk, set aside. Heat a non-stick fry pan with PAM. Pour the whipped egg in the pan to make a nice round pancake. Cook for 1 minute, medium heat. Then pour the blueberries in a line down the center of the egg circle. Cover and cook 2 minutes or until egg is set. Sprinkle with cinnamon. Slide the pancake on a plate. Fill with sweetened whipped cottage cheese, reserving about a tablespoon. Fold over both edges. Top with remaining cottage cheese and a few berries.

Buon appetito! (I'm giving the Italians credit; I have no idea why.) With a great cup of coffee, of course. Dang that was good!

Can You Say Extreme Kitchen Makeover?

Actually, it is kind of difficult to say it quickly - extreme kitchen makeover, after about three of them I get to "A Ku chA Kuch A Kee".

These homeowners had honey stained, oak cabinetry. Here's a cool thing - they had us fill the holes from the old handle pulls on the top cabinets and then they could switch to swanky knobs. Then we did our magic and turned their oak into their dream kitchen. I know I'm impressed and I do this for a living.

A Picture Paints a Thousand Words

One early morning, way too early for normal people to be awake, the Painter took our camera. There was no one to stop him, we were all sleeping. He decided to try his hand as, “Mr. Freelance Photographer.” We were at the cabin and he found a pasture/junk yard. So now we have an entire folder on the pc filled with his junkyard “art”. The funny thing is; I kinda like it.
For a writer, these photos are great fodder. For example:

“Honey! Where is the spare mattress?”

“I think it’s leaning against the station wagon.”

“What are you talking about? I thought it was in the garage.”

“No, when the chimney blew off the roof last month after the furnace ignited your pantyhose hanging on a line between it and the copper pipes above the washing machine and the flaming ashes fell into a can of lacquer thinner which threw flames and caused that explosion in the furnace, I used the mattress to extinguish the fire and it burned up, leaving only the bedspring which I put out by the station wagon so I can drive all that stuff to the dump tomorrow.”

“Oh.”

Mom & Pop & Baby

I never thought my status as a small business owner with my husband would become a symbol plied in national politics, however disingenuous, by the politicians touting their concern for the “mom & pops”. But hey, fame is hard to come by these days, it's just that the term, mom & pop, makes me cringe; it makes me feel old.


When the Painter decided to “invest” in his new business back in 1983, the first thing on the list was a dependable and large vehicle to carry supplies. Thus, the 1973 Custom Cruiser was just the ticket. My eldest child is proud to have among her baby book photos, a picture of her on the day she was driven home from the hospital in the paint mobile. Notice the buckets and can of Glidden paint just behind her car seat. Nice ride! Who could want more?

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.