Painting, Continued

During the last seven years we have received a thorough indoctrination in the following beliefs:

1. Graffiti artists aren't the only vandals who work with paint.
2. Any painter worth hiring charges more than you care to pay.
3. No other sort of painter will prepare surfaces as carefully as the owner will.
4. The pain of hiring such a painter is less than the pain of seeing paint peel in two or three years.

The practical corollaries have been that

1. We will paint anything we can reach, from at most a ten foot ladder or by hanging out a window.
2. We will wince and write a check for rake boards, the dormer, and the reachable but depressing porch rails.

These beliefs may be true primarily of the United States. The best painter we know, an immigrant trained in Europe, says that Americans don't want to pay for good painting. The brochures from the Fine Paints of Holland line imply the same; they discuss the apprenticeship that Dutch painters undergo, and speak of the decent income a qualified painter makes in the Netherlands.