Nose-Blind

Our team of professional painters have encountered many challenges over the years, but some of the hardest challenges to deal with are strange odors on the job site. It’s a known fact that each home has its own smell, not bad – not good, just its own smell. Often as homeowners we get “nose-blind” to the standard smell of our home and not until we have friends or family over would we know that something “smells” in the home. Our teams encounter a lot of homes and a lot of smells; some good and some bad, but rarely do we encounter an overwhelming smell that makes breathing difficult.

A recent customer of ours had a love for cats, lots of cats! And lots of cats means lots of litter boxes. Now when I say there are litter boxes onsite, I do not mean a few, I mean there were over a dozen that the painters could see. The smell was so bad that it literally “hit” you when you entered the house. The type of odor that burns your eyes and throat. The job foreman came up with the idea to have the crew wear their respirators full time while working on the project. It was only a 3-day job and straight forward as it was just standard wall repainting, so no heavy exertion on anyone’s part.

When the homeowner came home from work on the first day and saw a team of 3 painters wearing respirators in her home, she immediately thought there was a gas leak or something worse had happened. Unsure of what reason the job foreman would give as to why the paint team was “masked up” to roll on latex paint, the first thing that came to his mind was “exposure “- “long term exposure.” Even though the team was applying low VOC latex paint, the job foreman told the homeowner that the team was wearing respirators for their health. He went on to explain that since they work with paint every day, wearing a respirator (even in doors and rolling the paint on) was a good practice to prevent any lung damage from “long-term exposure” to paint since they applied it daily.

As illogical as this “reason” was, since low VOC latex paint is not harmful at all, the job foreman did not have the heart to tell the homeowner that the smell of her 12 cat litter boxes was so overwhelming that it made it impossible to work for an 8-hour shift in the home without the use of the respirator to breath. The homeowner accepted his reason for wearing a respirator and went on with her day, lost in her “nose-blindness” to the crippling odor of a dozen dirty cat litter boxes. No matter what your painting needs, with or without a respirator, our team of professional painters will get the job done. We will transform your space with paint; however, we will not clean the litter box.

Until the next crazy story of the Adventures of Wheeler Painting and Restoration Services, be well and do good.