I was
about to butt in when I clocked the look on her face. She was going
to go for it. She even looked pleased! ‘Does it come in the
duck egg blue I chose?’ she asked, holding a highly manicured
finger against her bee-stung collagen lips.
‘Shouldn’t think so,’ he said cheerily. ‘Course
we could blend something up for you but I tell you what,’
he paused for dramatic effect. I knew what was coming next. It would
put her off altogether and we’d lose the job.
‘A nice bit of magnolia suits a hall very well. Classic. A
blank canvas if you will.’ She was smiling. She was bloody
smiling. Classic, she was thinking, just like me.
So we painted the hall mag-bloody-nolia; the dullest of non-colour
paints. I knew why he loved it. There were no feature walls to edge
perfectly and it was easy to tidy up if you splashed a bit on the
light switch or the skirting. His hands weren’t so good, he
had a bit of a shake, but he wasn’t going to retire.
‘So what?’ you might ask. I’ll tell you what;
no way of squeezing a decent profit out of premium, wipe clean emulsion.
You couldn’t charge plenty then slap on something cheaper,
not when she expected to be wiping marmite sandwich and muddy fingerprints
off it for five years. Don’t look at me like that. You’d
do the same. The quotes are so cutthroat now it’s the only
way to make a profit.
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Pick
out the forty quid tins with the punter who confuses a fat wallet
with good taste; advise on the sheepskin rollers for that perfect
finish; tell them you’ll use sable brushes or dodo feathers
if it makes them happy. Then get the own-brand, cheap as chips paint,
synthetic rollers, the cheapest brushes you can – knocking
hell out of them to get rid of the loose bristles first –
and go to it.
It’s best if they’re having a week in Marbella or up
country. If not we keep a few empty expensive tins kicking about.
Look, it doesn’t matter. By next season they’ll want
it covered with gold leaf or rhino skin. What’s the point
putting good paint on a bog-standard plasterboard kit house just
to paint over it again in five minutes time?
Cheaper paint loses its colour faster too so you can guarantee that
two sizzling English summers will put paid to that lovely hue and
if the punter ‘simply adores’ the colour, you can just
freshen it up with more of the same. Much easier than trying to
put Egyptian Cream over last year’s Salsa Verde. We used six
coats in one place before the green stopped bleeding through. Anyway,
the little extra profit is just idiot tax. You can deal with the
unreasonable demands of the Chantelles and Tiffanys of the world
when you know you’re getting one over them. Everyone does
it.
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