Stop, Look, A Lesson - Part 1

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Back Story

Mrs. H has been a client for a very long time. She owned a home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware which I helped her to care for. It was an older home in an affluent neighborhood that had cedar shingle siding and a front porch that stretched across the face of the house. She really seemed to be attached to the place so I was as shocked as anyone when she announced she would be selling it and moving to a one year old home with a modern design in neighboring Lewes. I did not even have a look at this new house before she bought it. I wish that I had.

Truth be told, I did not have enough faith in my ability back then to determine with confidence, the signs of a poorly constructed home. As a budding builder I always seemed to want to give others in the trades the benefit of the doubt. I think this is a fairly common impulse across society. We want to believe that auto mechanics know their business and that doctors are up on the latest advances in medicine. In short we want our professionals to be professionals. This job, and a half dozen or so like it, have taught me to open my eyes and focus on what is truly in front of me.
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Great paint jobs start with surface preparation

A couple of years after moving into her new home Mrs H called me to see if a local blacksmith and I would be interested in re-painting the wooden trim on the Lewes house. (The rest of the building is clad in Georgia Pacific Cedar impressions) The blacksmith, Keith and I had done some exterior painting for her which she had been very happy with. She wanted us to do our best job and to use oil paint, which had not yet been taken off the shelves of the local paint store. We priced the job taking into account the time involved and the premium materials. The resulting cost was one which demanded our results last the five to eight years we had told Mrs. H the paint job would be good for. Lewes sits right on the Delaware Bay so we knew we could not narrow our prediction anymore due to extreme conditions and variables. We performed the work, Mrs. H was very happy and when we left the job I had no doubt it would hold its own and last at least a half a decade.

16 months later Mrs H was calling to say that our paint job was peeling in several places.
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