Making things pretty

We have an elderly handy man who works at Bassline 2 or 3 days a week. There is lots to do – an old building needs lots of work done… electrical, plumbing, painting etc – he is worth his weight in gold and has saved us a small fortune.

But: he has absolutely no aesthetic sense whatsoever. He does things that drive me crazy.

For example: we use a deep red paint for some of the feature walls inside and outside the venues. He ran out of the paint and decided to mix his own red paint and went around blobbing this obviously different colour red on all that places that needed a touch up….so I told him (through gritted teeth) I thought the walls and pillars needed to repainted completely and he must get the proper colour from the hardware store…which he did and finished the job in double quick time. But he only painted up to about 2 metres and was quite happy to tell me that was ok and anyway he couldn’t do anymore because the paint had run out and people don't look up ... duh??? Scream!

Then we had to extend the bar counters – so good old Neil knocked something up out of wood, slapped on a coat of varnish (nothing matched the original bar!) and that was that. When I thanked him but suggested he paint the counters to match the rest he was horrified…

Him: This is good wood, lovely stuff....

Me: Nope, it's just pine and it doesn’t match the rest of the bar.

Him: It will be ruined if I paint it.

Me (now getting annoyed): It won’t be ruined – these things look like large coffins – please paint them to match the rest of the bar.

Him: No, I won’t ruin the wood.

Me, quite (well, very) loudly: Just make the bloody things look pretty for goodness sake.

To this day he can’t understand why I want something to look pretty…..whenever I ask him to make something I have to tell him over and over that it must look pretty…please, please! I can just imagine what he would say if I asked him to use the fabulous flower nails…