"You got your half Stevie babe?" "Yeah, right here" He says, pulling a crumpled half of a 20 out of his wallet. I dig my wallet out of my back pocket and delve for the matching half that's been sitting there for about 3 months. The three months since brushes came to an abrupt cessation of trading! We're outside the Lion in Harlech and as soon as it's established that we have our funds in order we make an entrance, order up 2 beers, slap our 'tenners' on the bar, laugh and get back to being mates again.
I'm not sure exactly on the timeline of brushes, but it came about after Huw had roped us in to paint his restaurant (later to be my restaurant), so mid 1990's I reckon. Me and Stevie were both part time KP's and full time students at the time and I, at least, had a bit of painting experience and a lot of miss placed confidence in my limited ability.
The restaurant job started well (we always started well), we argued (constantly) and I tried to take the senior partner role over Stevie who, in all fairness, was pretty fucking awful at any kind of manual work and didn't have a clue what he was doing. I put him in charge of 'cutting in' which he took to pretty well after I explained that it meant "paint the edges mate"!
We had all the restaurant tables and chairs away from the walls, filling half the room, and a stepladder between us. A stepladder that we used as a paint pot holder because we only had one tin of paint open. A stepladder that we somehow managed to knock over and spill about 3 litres of paint all over the floor! It was everywhere, it was a disaster and the restaurant was due to open back up in 2 days time.
It took us longer to get the paint out of the carpet than it did to do the job itself, after we stayed up half night trying to clean it we had a bit of a panic and hatched a plan to get it cleaned before Huw saw it. he'd of gone mad and we'd probably of lost our jobs as well as any chance of getting the cash we'd negotiated for the painting.
We hired an industrial carpet cleaner the next morning, then bought paint to replace the spilt tin, pretty much wiping out any chance of making anything on the job at all but we did get it clean. The only problem was that it was so clean that when we moved the tables and chairs back into place it was obvious that we'd cleaned half of the carpet and not the rest! We were knackered, it was about 3 in the morning and the only option was to move all the furniture again and clean the other half! A long night with a lot of swearing at each other and, you'd of thought, enough signs there that we weren't very good at this decorating game.
We got paid though, and Huw was well pleased that the new paint job even made the place look cleaner!! If only he knew the pain... Anyhow, money in pocket we headed for a few beers down the Lion and Brushes was born. We laughed off our rookie errors and decided that it was just a blip and we'd actually make a great team. We'd leaflet the whole town, we'd stick an ad in the paper, we'd buy a van, we'd work in between lectures and take time off when we needed to study. It was genius, it was brilliant... this time next year we'd be millionaires!!
We did all of that over the next few weeks, even bought the van, a lovely old thing from about 1975. We got a 1000 'Brushes' leaflets published, took the van out and merrily distributed them and were so excited when the phone finally rang and we had a quote to give, things were looking up!
Our first (and only!) customers were a lovely old couple who wanted their bathroom decorated. The Old fella gave us a run down of what he wanted: One wall papered, the others painted but only after a dado rail was fitted, then just gloss the door and job done.He had all the paint, paper, everything we needed but couldn't do it himself due to an injured leg. We gave knowing nods at the right times and must of seemed pretty legitimate with our little painters van and me writing down the requirements as he spoke. We agreed to drop a quote up later in the day and got back in our van and drove off. As we got round the first corner Stevie asked me "what the fuck is a dado rail"? I didn't know either!
We came up with the price of 66 quid, plucked out of the air as we figured it would take us an afternoon to do it all and dropped a written quote in. Sure enough they called to confirm and up we rocked on a dreary old day to get it done. I got started on the wallpapering as Stevie didn't have a clue how to do it. I put him in charge of cutting in (his speciality!) and made sure the paint was safely placed and for the first couple of hours it actually went pretty well. We even fitted the dado rail without too much drama and before too long we only had the door to gloss.
Now I'd glossed window frames, and I thought it was pretty easy so I set Stevie on the case and told him to keep it thin but after a few minutes I could see it was going wrong, I took over but couldn't do it either and after about half an hour the door was an absolute disaster, the runs were pouring down and we had to put some of the left over wallpaper under it to catch the drips.
Panic set in when we realised it was nearly time to go home and that our gracious hosts were due to come and check on us any minute. Now would probably of been a good time to ask the old fella for a bit of advice in hindsight, or maybe just for a bit of help but we didn't do that. No sir, we came up with a much better plan than that.
We took the door off its' hinges altogether, snuck it around the house and quickly crammed it into the back of our van. Now obviously after our various failed attempts at painting it the door was dripping wet with gloss and slippery as hell, added to this it was starting to rain and the trip from the bathroom to van went directly past the front windows of our dear old unsuspecting punters!! We were covered in paint and miserable on what was now becoming a more and more miserable day.
I then had to pop back and explain that the door would be much better off in the workshop overnight (we didn't have a workshop...) as it could be laid flat for a nice even finish on the paint job. I told him all this with my paint covered hands folded casually behind my back and thankfully he bought the blag… well I guess he really didn't have much choice but he almost seemed to agree that it was a good theory. We promised to have the door back the next day and headed off down the road with his dripping wet bathroom door crushing us to the dashboard of the van!
There wasn't a workshop but there was an old unused garage at my place, unused because the roof wasn't great and it was a bit of a mess but it would do for this job so we headed for that via the DIY shop on the high street to grab some paint stripper and a scraper. It was while I was in there that I discovered what seemed to be our saviour, a gloss roller. Me and Stevie were almost in high spirits when I explained that all we needed to do was strip off the crap we'd painted and re do it with the roller, an hours work tops I told him.
It was a bit tougher than that and as the rain and wind started up outside we struggled to get an even surface to work from. Eventually it was ok though, not great but ok and the gloss roller was, and is, an amazing creation. making the job so simple we laughed at our own ignorance and stupidity in not knowing about it. Job finally done we shut down the garage doors and headed out for a pint or two to analyse our first day as professional decorators. The conclusion was that is could of gone worse and as I drifted off to sleep that night with now a full blown storm raging outside I actually felt pretty satisfied with our improvisations and adaptability.
Yeah that storm, you guessed it! The roof of the garage was lined with some kind of black material and it was old and rotten and falling down. All it needed was a bit of wind and it must of been fluttering away all night gradually crumbling to pieces, pieces that all fell directly onto our wet, freshly painted door and then dried into the paint. It was awful, it was way worse than the few runs of paint we had been stressing about, it was ruined, big time. I just couldn't believe it, and our luck, it could not have looked any worse.
Stevie turned up and we decided to move the door into my dining room and start again, stripping and sanding it back once more before adding yet another coat of gloss. I called up our ever patient customers and explained that the paint had not quite dried enough to transport the door and that we had another job on so sorry for the inconvenience but they'd have to wait another day to have a bathroom door. Shambolic... Me and Stevie argued some more but there was nothing else we could do.
It took 2 more days until we felt the paint was dry enough and then we turned up at the house to 2 very unhappy and unsatisfied customers. We fixed the door back on, I looked up and saw my wallpaper was peeling, it was painful and embarrassing but even after all this the guy still remained calm. He was a really nice guy and even told us "I know you tried boys but you're no good at this job, here, take this, this is purely for all the effort you put in". It was a 20 pound note. We got in the van and I ripped it in half, giving one half to Stevie "that's it mate, we're done with this game", and we were.
