Covered in Teak

Turning off the belt sander I quickly turn down my headphones to save my ears from the loud music. Looking down at my boardshorts, I see they are stained yellow from the teak wood. Dusting them off only creates a cloud of dust around me but it doesn't matter anyways because they are covered in paint and mud. Only remnants of what they used to be show through. Standing up to stretch, I look back at the damage done. The deck is almost sanded and I'm ahead of the deadline. As a reward to myself, I weave my bike around potholes on the dirt road so I can go for a swim.

As of late I got hired by my friend Robo (short for robot, and another nickname by Gio) to work on a beach house mansion. The main guest house remodel just finished and now a bigger house is being built next to it. A year later, they are starting to finally paint the interior. The owner brings in his own crew of workers and artists from the Midwest to build his custom homes. I'm just a very small part of the cog in a much larger set of wheels.

Everything is custom on the house, the exterior siding is textured with sand and trimmed with exotic woods. He has stone tile and statues carved and shipped over. The railing to the stairs is all custom steel work. Eventually the plan is to have a waterfall with it's own stream running through the yard.

Rolling on the paint

Tools of the trade

I found the most interesting thing is that he finds artists that he likes and gives them the canvas and all of the supplies; in return they get to create whatever they want. He lets their imagination run wild. One example is they cut down an iron wood tree and left twelve feet of it standing. A wood carver then came and turned it into a Chinese dragon. It's so detailed even the scales contain finer details. The list goes on. 

Coming back from swimming, I get back down and start running the belt sander sending dust everywhere again. One of the painters comes out and tells me that I do a beautiful job sanding. I laugh to myself because they are the artists painting the walls as if they were recreating a Monet. After a second of silence I see the painter is waiting for a response so I thank the painter kindly and continue on.