Thursday 26 January 2012

Old mr hubbard



I was reading a forum and some one was asking how he could store old paint?
Well this got me thinking about what my first boss mr hubbard who used to get us to re use our old paint scraps or leftovers if you like!
He had a large wooden shed which stored all the paint equipment all very orderly and organised it was too, rows of shelves groaning with tins of all sizes brand names long gone like Valspar, berger, ring a bell with anyone?
on a quiet day we were instructed to brush out all the remains of oil based paints into a gallon tin as they were then.
we had to carefully remove the skins from the tins and some of these skins were crusty with age and the remaining paint was gloopy but surprised to still liquid!
once a gallon tin was full we had to stir the mixture of colours together it was always pink for some reason.
After hammering on the lid and brushing the lid top with a sample of the resulting colour we had produced and labelling the atrocious mixture "smudge"
Smudge was used for painting the inside of cast iron guttering and downpipes which was one of the jobs us young uns were assigned to do.
Hubbards painting and decorating was by no means a modern company it was a family business based on old fashioned values, trust, honesty, and above all high quality i miss those old days and loved my first job and intend to write about them and some of the old techniques in detail.
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