B & R Painting Plus

When Kari, Preston and I moved back to West Des Moines in August, 1984, it was a very scary deal. I rented an apartment at Normandy Terrace on the phone. I had very little money saved and no job. We borrowed a pickup and horse trailer to move all our earthly goods. Well, almost all. We stored some things in Mom's corn crib and she agreed to keep our dog for us.
The kids started school and I started job hunting. I finally got a position as secretary/bookkeeper for a small printing company. The pay was only $200 a week - hardly enough to pay our apartment rent. It was obvious I was going to have to find a higher paying job or another part-time job.
After awhile I got acquainted with the other employees. One of the guys worked on weekends painting for a man who owned several office buildings. I finally asked Chuck if he could get me a job painting, too. I told him I had done a lot of painting, papering, cleaning, etc. where I came from. Luckily, Alan Z. said he would give me a trial so the next weekend I met Chuck at the building Mr. Z was currently updating. He had just purchased twin office buildings on Linden St. near downtown.
I had always considered myself a very neat painter - not a perfectionist - but nearly so. I had no idea what perfection was until I painted for Alan Z. He would come in in the morning, tell us what he wanted done and leave us to do it. Later he would come back and check our work. There could not be so much as a drop of paint on the woodwork or a run in the paint on the wall. But the pay was good.
When Bud moved to WDM to live with us, (25 years ago tomorrow) he found some temporary work through Manpower, but nothing full time. So he started painting with Chuck & me on weekends. By then Mr. Z had bought a large building in Highland Park. We met him there on Saturday morning. He came in and said, "Now boys and girls, here's what we're going to do." "WE??"
Eventually I found a better accounting job at Wright Tree Service. And with Bud working and helping pay the rent, things weren't so tight. At some point we gave up working for Alan and started our own company: "B & R Painting Plus".
There's a house at 22nd & Ashworth in which we painted every room. I still remember taking wallpaper off the walls so we could paint. What a job!
I think the last official job B & R did was wall papering a kitchen in one of the Normandy Terrace apartments. What should have been an easy three or four hour job took all day. The paper the woman chose had a pattern of squares which I was determined to make match up perfectly (even though she told me I didn't have to).
Since then I've only painted and papered for myself or family or friends. Whenever I do, I am reminded the next day that it's a young person's game. I'm going to tackle the guest bedroom this spring. But I'm taking my own sweet time doing it.