PDCA Residential Forum

It all starts with me driving my finely tuned Chevelle down a long dirt road in what appears to be the middle of nowhere. I follow this road until I reach an average sized house at the end. As I get out of my newly restored gas hog I take a deep breath of fresh air and look out over acres and acres of beautiful wide open land.

“Ahh home again,” I say to myself with a smile. I proceed to my pole barn which towers the house. “Screech,” sounds the door as I open it. The buzz of lights turning on fills the pole barn as I walk further in, revealing my kingdom of toys. But then something strange begins to happen, when I walk further into the shop I hear a strange annoying beeping sound. “Beep beep beep beep,” the noise gets louder! “Beep beep beep beep!” It is almost right in front of me. “Beep beep beep beep!”

Suddenly I wake up, finding myself lying on an air mattress that my parents gave to me for a bed in my new apartment. I quickly roll to the edge of the bed and hit the snooze button on the annoying alarm clock. 6:55 is what it reads. “Dang I’m going to be late again,” I say frustrated to my trusty cat Rizzo, who was a war victim I rescued from a shepherd/husky mix my parents decided to adopt when I moved out.

As we both jump out of bed I rush to get dressed for work. I can hardly get my shirt on before Rizzo is ramming my leg begging for food. Once I’m dressed I get Garfield, I mean Rizzo, his breakfast and head out the door. As usual I get down the first flight of stairs from my second floor apartment and realize I’ve forgotten something. Tripping all the way back up to my door I look at my watch. 7:10, I’m already 10 minutes late. After getting everything needed in my possession it is back out my five front doors, that is after I chase down Rizzo who enjoys exploring the halls in the morning.

7:20am I finally reach the shop at Signet Painting where I am told four places that I need to go to for the day and 12 different paint colors that will be needed. Racing out to the work truck I grab a bottle of water for breakfast and leave for the first job.

After arriving at job one of the day, and painting all thewalls I call Jessie the “information database” of Signet Painting. When she goes back over the colors with me I realize I’ve just painted a white house blue, so to speak. As quickly as possible I repaint and move to the next job.

3:30 pm after four houses and 22 repaints I head back to the shop to call it a day. I stop the truck in back and enter the shop. As I walk in I see the two spray booth workers, “How is it going?” I ask. “Not too bad,” is the reply.

4:00pm I head back to my apartment to feed Rizzo once again. When I enter my underground parking lot I look over at my unrestored Chevelle. “One day,” I say under my breath. One minute later and five front doors entered I have finally made it home again; I look in the kitchen for something to eat for supper. Well it looks like mac and cheese or frozen pizza again.

Once I settle down on the couch enjoying a movie and a bowl of mac and cheese I think about my dream house in the middle of nowhere. The one I had seen this morning and realized I had a long way to go to get there. After the movie I reach down in my wallet to grab my lucky power ball ticket. When they read off the numbers for the night I once again succeed in not matching a single number. “Well looks like I’m back to work tomorrow,” I say to myself, while putting my dish in the sink. Getting dressed for bed, once again I’m getting head butted by my mini pig Rizzo, wanting his final meal for the day. As I lay in bed thinking of
all my imaginary toys and land, I smile and say, “One day”.

Editor’s Note: Devin is 20 years old and in his second year at Signet
Painting. Please encourage this young man to keep writing. If
you liked his essay, drop him a line at .

We’d like to hear your “day in the life” stories for The Painter’s Rag. Tell
us how your day starts, flows and ends. We’d like to hear not only from
contractors but your estimators, painters, project managers, admin,
anyone and everyone. Send to