Painting

Post date: Nov 21, 2013 10:24:13 PM

Like most of my entries, this is not about fine art, but about walls. Here in Nicaragua no one seems to wash walls. When they get dirty, they get re-painted.

I tend to see things. After a few days in our rented house, I noticed that there were smudges on the walls - quite a few smudges, too. Since we had a maid for 18 hours each week, I assumed that she had plenty of time to clean the walls, but it never happened. Being somewhat compulsive, I washed off some of the smudges myself. I had thought of showing the maid how effective a little soap and elbow grease had been, but hesitated.

So yesterday I was talking about my volunteer work maintaining a few houses with my Spanish teacher and mentioned painting. He explained that no one would consider washing a wall here - you simply paint. I had found that paint is quite cheap. I paid US$8 for a gallon of water-based latex paint. I suspected that it would be of poor quality, as that price is about half what I would pay in the US. But it covers well, doesn't stink, and is easily cleaned from brushes.

One significant difference is that in US nearly every store that sells paint can and will mix any color you want, using computer-controlled equipment that can match a sample. Here the colors are pre-mixed and, necessarily, more limited. It is possible to get custom colors, but just not everywhere.

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