Last weekend, several of us neighbors gave the building where we live a thorough cleaning; as we used a hydro-jet, which has a lot of pressure, the paint on the handrail was lifted in different places.
During the week we talked with the neighbors to see if it was possible to collect some money together to buy white rubber and oil paint for the handrails, railings and roof.
As usual only 10 owners out of the 16 apartments agreed. 3 apartments are unoccupied and the other 3 apartments, the owners claim that they cannot collaborate.
After I had the money I went with a neighbor to the paint store to buy some paint.
We were attended by a very nice guy, who showed us different brands of paints and recommended us a Type "B" which he said was good and not so expensive, we also bought a small pot of primer (the one that is applied after sanding the handrail so that it does not rust again) and we bought it and left.
We went back to the building to start painting and nobody dared to start the activity, one of the neighbors went ahead and started painting.
That was a real mess, when he started painting the grates and the ceiling it turns out that he painted more of the floor than anything, hahahaha... he wasn't prepared to do that (he didn't know), we had a hard time cleaning up everything he messed up.
The owner of one of the first floor apartments (who has a construction company) called us together and told us that he was going to bring some of the workers from his company to paint the whole building and he would be responsible for them, that we do not go to to pay anything.
Well, you can imagine the joy that we all felt, because as the saying goes: "cobbler to his shoe". as we say here in Venezuela, means that everyone should do what he or she really knows.
Mr. López's workers arrived and painted the entire building over the weekend.
They started on the top floor (4th) and worked their way down to the first floor; the first thing they did was to wallpaper the floor, then with a damp cloth they cleaned the areas to be painted. They used small brushes, a roller and a specialized spray gun.
The truth is that they were quite fast in doing the job, but when they got to the second floor, they gave us the bad news that they ran out of paint, a neighbor and I had to collect some more money among the neighbors who were engaged in this and we went running back to the paint store.
We no longer bought the paint in gallon, but only bought two quart pots, ie the equivalent of half a gallon and that was enough to finish the job.
While the guys were working, we provided water, lemonade, coffee and some snacks. Also during those two days we made lunch for them, they already had breakfast.
In a consensus of the neighbors who were carrying out this task, we came to the conclusion that we should give some money to those guys who well deserved it; so we collected $10 for each apartment and we were able to give them at least that $100, they were very happy for the attention received during those two days and for that $100 they did not count on, and we were super happy because everything was beautiful (well painted).
So much for my experience this weekend my dear friends, thank you for coming this far.
I say goodbye until soon, wishing you all a good day.
All photos are my own, edited in Canva in its free version.
For this publication I used Deepl translator (free version).
