A Summer to Remember

The Pros and Cons of Summer Painting Jobs
Eamon and I decided that if we were going to die, we were going out with good music. I cranked the Guardians of the Galaxy Awesome Mix Volume 1 and we held on for dear life.
A desert-like scene at sunset with foreground featuring a close-up hand holding three prepaid VISA cards. In the background, a solitary figure stands with arms outstretched, carrying paint cans in each hand. Cacti and tumbleweeds are scattered across the parking lot.
Mackenzie Beck | Art Director
Francesca Pacchiano | Editor

10.16.24
| Vol. 56, No. 2 | Article

My black MINI Cooper S was full to the absolute brim. Even though it was a two-door, it didn’t have a lot of space. We crammed everything we could into that thing to transport our painting equipment between job sites. It was hell, but we made it work.     

The back seats folded down with Eamon and I’s full-sized tote bins and our step ladders stacked on top. The garbage bag and the bag of wet cut cans was shoved in behind the totes and barely allowed the trunk to close. 

On the roof, the 32 ft and two 24 ft ladders were tied as securely as we could manage to the detachable foam roof racks provided by our boss. My car was not designed for roof racks, and in order to attach them to the car, we wrapped the straps through the car’s open windows, and when seated, we held the ends of the straps tight. 

Eamon sat in the passenger seat, the five gallon bucket with paint brushes and water balanced on his lap. It was cramped, but I could still see out of all the windows and we were behind schedule for the next job. 

My car, a standard, required both hands to drive. I wrapped the straps around my left hand as tight as possible and used it to steer while shifting gears with my right. Mr. Blue Sky rattled the speakers and I hoped it would be enough to drown out the anxiety I felt.

It was like driving the most chaotic clown car ever, and I worried that at any moment, something was going to snap.     

The roads were steep in that area of Nanaimo, but I drove slowly and we made it to Hammond Bay Rd.

I remember glancing at Eamon and laughing at the absurdity of the situation, us sitting there covered in paint with six feet of ladder hanging over each end of my tiny car.

I remember glancing at Eamon and laughing at the absurdity of the situation, us sitting there covered in paint with six feet of ladder hanging over each end of my tiny car.

But the sun was shining, the equipment was secure, and the summer breeze was blowing through the windows. It was okay.

Then the car in front of us hit the breaks. 

I slammed on the breaks, the engine revved as I struggled to downshift fast enough to avoid stalling, and then the ladders slid forward. Eamon and I pulled as hard as we could on the ropes and the ladder stopped mere feet from hitting the car in front of us. 

The rope tightened around my wrist and I gripped it harder, using my body weight to hold it down. Eamon did the same, braced against the passenger seat. The ladder dipped toward the hood of my car. We loosened our grip and it bobbed back up to rest level with the roof once more. 

The traffic started moving again and I drove no faster than 20 kilometres an hour. When we turned off Hammond Bay Rd, the ladders slid sideways and stopped diagonally across the roof. 

We finally arrived at the next project and Eamon and I practically kissed the ground. I swore I’d never drive with ladders on my car again. 

~

Two people in paint-splattered clothes sit on a sandy beach. One eats an apple, and both are smiling. Trees, houses, and a cloudy sky form the background.

Fran and Eamon on a lunch break.
Courtesy of: Cassandra Blenkin

I worked as a painter in the summer of 2022. I was in desperate need of a job that wasn’t working in another kitchen and applied to several dozen jobs on Indeed. Summer painting was the only one I got a callback for. 

My experiences, some of which are described below, were a mixed bag of either fun or heinously unsafe. For legal reasons, I will not say which company I worked for because I technically didn’t work for them and instead worked for the franchise owner. It’s important to show both the good and bad sides of labour-intensive jobs, but I don’t want to be sued. 

I did like the physical labour of the job. Painting on a mainly external crew meant eight to ten hours a day spent working outside. I used ladders of every size, climbed on roofs, and at one job, painted upside down over the edge of the roof while harnessed in.

It was terrifying and exhilarating. 

Seeing a house transform with a fresh coat of paint in only a few days was inspiring, and conquering my fear of heights was empowering. Cassy, Eamon, and I quickly became friends, and we met a lot of interesting people. 

It’s aspects like these that draw students into labour-intensive summer jobs. Digital Media student Shaye Netzel and her roommate Bella Lang both worked for painting companies this summer. Bella worked for Student Works and Shaye worked for Bigger Picture Painting.

“We were deciding to live together and she said painting can pay pretty good for students,” Shaye said. “Mainly it was to have the ability to stay in Nanaimo.” 

The skills that students learn on these jobs are practical and, regardless of previous experience, by the end of the summer students have built up a lot of hours with this trade.

This is one of the things that made Bella want to work as a painter. “I could go and paint my own house now. Or even an interior, because I worked on interiors as well. There’s lots of life skills,” she said.

There is something to be said for painting outside in Nanaimo. It has a lot of fantastic viewpoints—they’re just all on people’s roofs. Shaye spent a lot of time on roofs.

“I was able to stand on the roof, harnessed in, look at the water and sit and admire the view. I was my crew’s roof girl because the roof didn’t really scare me as long as I had my harness on. I felt very comfortable up there. I knew if I fell I was gonna be able to save myself with the harness. I just loved watching the world from up there,” Shaye explained.

It was these moments, like what Shaye described, where I would really love painting. At the top of a 32 ft ladder, cut can in hand, I could see the islands just past Pipers Lagoon and appreciate a view I wouldn’t get to see in my regular day-to-day life. 

Cree Elder Auntie Stella Johnson wearing an orange shirt and black vest stands in front of an open office door and smiles at the camera. Her arms are relaxed and at her sides. She has short brown hair and wears glasses. Her earrings are dangly.

View from a ladder.

On the flip side though, there was a lot of danger involved with painting and my boss was not very enthusiastic about safety. I was only harnessed maybe five times, most of which I asked for the harness to be provided. 

If the roof felt unsafe to me and I asked for the harness, but my boss deemed it safe to work on anyways, we used a ‘specialty grip mat’ that had the same flimsy look and feel as the grip liners placed under carpets. On the steeper, slicker roofs, the mat would slide under our feet and we had to just deal with it.

If a roof had only a little incline and was deemed ‘safe’, we were just told not to fall off. At the time, I liked the freedom and responsibility and didn’t want to cause trouble, but looking back I sure wished I had the harness. 

My favourite project was a house that the clients wanted painted almost entirely green. We were skeptical, but they chose the most beautiful dark green and we quickly saw the vision. 

Cassy, Eamon and I were on the job for four days before our boss showed up. I was well into the middle of the siding and had perfected my method of painting a bunch of boards in five foot chunks before needing to move the ladder. 

My boss, however, insisted I was doing it wrong and decided to show me how to do siding ‘properly’. He took my paint brush and cut can and climbed my ladder. He went quickly and slopped paint across one board. It dripped heavily down the boards below it. He only painted three feet before needing to move the ladder. 

When he had finished the demonstration, he’d used up 45 minutes, painted a quarter of what I could do in the same amount of time, and had left so many drips that it took me a half hour to fix his mess. He also left Cassy and Eamon in similar positions. 

But, by the end of the project, we’d cleaned up his mess and left the house in a much better state than we found it. 

The clients make or break a job. Shaye had a lot of positive experiences and the clients were a highlight for her. “I love the clients. We painted so many amazing people’s houses who [are] just so appreciative and so kind to you. You meet so many interesting people.” 

Most of my experiences and interactions with clients were lovely. One lady brought out juice and snacks when she thought we’d been working too long in the sun and encouraged us to sit in her shaded patio.

Not all clients were nice, however, and my crew’s first interior job was no exception. The clients were an older couple who kept all the windows and doors shut and the heat at a healthy 25 degrees. To top it off, the man would micromanage every single thing we painted. 

We not so affectionately named that project ‘The Hell Hole’. Everything seemed to go wrong. We were a month and a half into the summer, only having done exterior jobs, and we were unknowingly painting with the wrong techniques until our boss showed up on the fourth day. Initially, he was understanding and helped us, but as the project continued and the issues became more layered, things changed. He moved everyone off the job except for me, and he and I spent several days sanding down and repainting one hallway three times. With each mistake we corrected, he shit-talked my crew. It was incredibly uncomfortable. 

There were several mix ups with the paint: the client told my boss the wrong paint colour and then got mad when we used what was ordered. Then the paint company also messed up the order and gave us the wrong shade—an issue we didn’t catch until it was already on one wall and didn’t match the other walls. 

When we finally ended up with the right colour, the paint was a particular kind that required keen skill and speed or else it would flash and leave marks along the walls. Skills us newbies did not have. The Hell Hole project was supposed to take five days to complete and ended up taking two weeks. Cassy and I shed many tears over that project.

Person sitting on a rocky ledge, wearing paint-splattered clothing, smiling with a wink. A house roof and greenery are in the background.

Cassy on a break.

At the beginning of the summer, we had five people in our crew. By the end, it was just Cassy and I left. Eamon was still painting but we were split into different crews and we didn’t see him again. 

We celebrated the end of our last day with Booster Juice smoothies and promises to never work a paint job again.

We celebrated the end of our last day with Booster Juice smoothies and promises to never work a paint job again.

I met my boss a few days later in an empty gym parking lot at dusk, where he handed me the summer bonus I’d earned: six hundred dollars split across three prepaid visas. It felt like a drug deal and when I asked why it couldn’t have been given in a paycheque, he said it was easier this way. I was too tired to argue. 

But for painters with better experiences, the end of summer can be almost bittersweet with plans already underway for next season.

“We’re both committed to going back to the same places we were this summer. My boss [and I] have already talked about me coming back next year,” Shaye said. 

Labour-intensive jobs are dangerous whichever way they’re looked at, but they can also be rewarding. It’s important to be safe and informed of the expectations and your rights as an employee before reaching the jobsite. I was naive and didn’t speak up as much as I should have and, in hindsight, I wish I wore the harness more. 

Fran is a Creative Writing student, a journalist for TAKE 5 Newsmagazine, managing editor for GOOEY Magazine and is now adding writer for The Nav to the many hats she wears. Her fiction has been published in the first issue of  GOOEY Magazine, and she was one of the interviewers for VIU’s Gustafson Poet, Karen Solie, which appears in Portal 2024.When she’s not studying, working, or being active in the campus community, Fran can be found tending her garden, where she enjoys the blooming weeds just as much as the flowers she planted.

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