Under the aegis of Boston's Best House Painters, we often cite our men and women for their hard work, customer service, and dedication.  We wouldn't downplay these citations in a million years; however, without a modicum of pure talent, all the hard work in the world may go for naught.

On that note, a little tidbit from the off-topic society today: the music world is mourning the death of Memphis singer-songwriter Alex Chilton.  After his tenure in the Box Tops (more on that in a bit), he went on to form Big Star, perhaps THE great American rock and roll band.  Not many folks get second acts: his was sublime.

But back to the Box Tops.  You've heard "The Letter" at some point over the years--maybe their version, maybe Joe Cocker's.  It's just one of those songs...

Here, at age 16, Alex Chilton singing lead on the Box Tops' "The Letter".

16 years old!  Pure, raw talent.  We've got a few Alex Chiltons on our team here; you can better believe we appreciate how lucky we are!

We use that tagline often--Boston's Best House Painters.  And let's be frank, blogs are for bragging so in one respect you might say we're merely flipping the coin of the realm; on a deeper level, of course, we believe we are Boston's best house painters, in large part because of the breadth of knowledge and creativity our men and women bring to the jobsite each day.

Above, from a recent project in Newton--this isn't paint-by-numbers, this isn't hit the marks and head for the hills; this is creativity, acumen, and delicacy, and we're proud of our results.  Thanks to Dawn L. for the feather and the hard work!

From a nice little blog on The War of Art, a meditation on resistance, 'the culprit that binds our creative pursuits':

We're residential painting contractors, hardly cosseted scribes and yet...we do spend considerable time telling you that our men and women are artists and traffic in dreams and ideas as easily as they do punchlists.  And so it might be fairly instructive for us all to consider where and when creativity emerges on your painting project, and where and when our house painters encounter any sort of Resistance-With-a-Capital-R?  

Over the next few weeks, we'll be taking a look at these questions--quite a bit more relevant to the nuts and bolts of what we do than it may seem at first brush.

A quick tip of the cap to Green building, a great and laudable project, and our friend Paul Eldrenkamp of Byggmeister, quoted here.

From the article referenced:

"For the moment, (green building) appeals more to the crusader who has some resources than to the average person, but there are more and more people who instead of going for the luxury kitchen or the master suite addition are more inclined to put that money into a deep energy reduction,'' Eldrenkamp said. "Partly because, to be honest, in 20 years that luxury kitchen is going to look like a 20-year-old kitchen. But that insulation is going to look like gold.''

How does green painting fit into what Paul is talking about?  Great question.  Easy answer: as component to a responsible design build, as seamlessly as possible.  As Nigel writes here, "Investing in a thorough, preparation-focused house painting protocol will yield the best and most durable results."  In spirit, a lot like Paul.  We like Byggmeister quite a bit here at Catchlight, after all.

On the radio this morning on my way into work, I heard a clip of the actor Walter Koenig announcing the suicide of his son, Andrew.  My generation remembers Andrew as 'Boner' Stabone from the hit sitcom Growing Pains; the generation prior will remember his father Walter as Ensign Chekov from the original Star Trek.

I will aim to tread carefully here, as there is little we do at Catchlight that concerns itself with life and death.  Safety is, of course, the notable exception; nonetheless, ours is almost wholly a supplemental function--at root and at best, we ornament our customers' lives.

From my vantage, Mr. Koenig's grief is palpable on a deep, nearly wordless level.  I have a young child, as do many of our painters, and I suspect their reactions to Koenig's announcement would be pretty similar to mine.  The temptation is to begin with "I can't imagine how horrible it must..."; the reality is that I can imagine, and I absolutely don't want to.  As a dad, an elemental level of Mr. Koenig's grief is immediately available to me in a way it wasn't a few years ago, and I'd argue that's a matter of perspective more than it is a sign of deepened character.

Here is where I tread extra carefully: through a far, far, far more narrow lens, I think our women and men are able to exceed your expectations on a regular basis because they are able to put themselves in your shoes and deliver the caliber of service they'd want for themselves.  Our painters are artists and experts at home improvement, and a good portion are regularly engaged in projects at their own homes, and so your perspective is immediately available to them--they'd no sooner leave a mess in their own hallway than they would in yours.  And here, I think, this shared perspective affords us the ability to promise you house painters who place your wishes and needs at their mountaintop every day.

With every Olympics comes a new reckoning with the concept of margin for error.  Particularly during the individual competitions, athletes often approach their starting gate with the knowledge that anything short of a flawless performance will keep them from the medal stand.  Nowhere is the diminishing margin for error more apparently and dramatically drawn than within the figure skating events.  Failure to perfectly execute a jump to its degree of difficulty--say, a last minute double subbing for a triple--can mean the difference between silver and gold.

While our house painters don't measure success on a painting project in time spent saluting the American flag, they are nonetheless beset by the pressure to perform.  But where the Russian judges measure in nine point nines, we adhere to a simpler yardstick: did we do what we said we would do, and did we do it with happiness and kindness?

We believe that nothing dooms a project to failure more quickly than the perception that one must serve several masters of divergent purpose.  The foreman wants it done this way, the estimator has a different idea, the painter beside you gets ticked off when you don't do something just like he does--who can succeed in their aim when that aim has been displaced and diffused?

To that end, as Elvis Costello sang back in the day, our aim is true; our estimates and change orders are clearly written, arrived at in consultation with our customers such that the standard of work and level of expectation are properly set.  In that regard, our painters are free to do what they do best: hitting those marks while providing superior customer service.  The results speak for themselves.

It's sort of a running joke here that most of our blog entries end up somewhat...hagiographic.  Is it humanly possible that we really are as happy as we say we are about being as great as we say we are?  That's a question for another day, but for now we'll take a side door through to a more modest statement:

We don't employ superstars. 

Not in the conventional sense of the term, anyhow.   And by way of explanation, I'm going to be a bit lazy (see...gaining modesty!) and fall back on an easy sports angle, and since it's winter in Boston I'll make it a hockey reference--we employ grinders.

Now let's take a step back before we unpack the grinder.  Remember that hockey's the Canadian national pastime and its rinks are the weekend morning destination for countless Northeastern and Midwestern parents and their little rink rats.  In other words, when you go in on hockey, you go all in on hockey.  And out of those teeming, shivering hordes, we've got less than a thousand men playing the sport at its highest professional level here in America.  Put another way, that means every single guy in the National Hockey League is already a true outlier, the 1% of the 1% best at what he does.

But among these superstars-in-any-other-context, there are the grinders: the guys who don't pot 50 goals a year or stop 95 out of every 100 shots; the guys who don't get the big headlines, not for lack of talent but for want of the need to stand out in an arena within which they already do; the guys who simply show up every day and play a solid two-way game. The grinder is never more noticeable than when he is absent.

Looking through a slate of recent customer evaluations, I am struck by how often the phrase "fit right in," or a variation thereof, comes up; similarly, customers on several occasions have mentioned how much they miss our house painters after their project has been completed. 

To me, this makes perfect sense.  Our men and women are certainly the 1% of the 1% of the best in terms of their ability to put paint to substrate; on talent and talent alone, surely they are superstars (and just as surely, there are other painting companies who might say as much).  But in point of fact, in what our folks do, in how they conduct themselves and practice their craft onsite, they are grinders--they do all the little things well, they function as a team, and their true worth is often most evident once the proverbial paint has dried and the next project has begun.

Shared text from several sites related to painting contractor warranties: "Another type of warranty is offered by the professional painting contractor. This warranty can be a gimmick, designed to entice the sale, or an honest attempt to be responsible for the quality of the job."

New England by large, and its Greater Boston area as microcosm, present very real weather concerns to the exterior painting project, particularly those projects begun later in the season as days are shortening and temperatures dropping.  To us, warrantying such a project for however many years is as much an attempt at responsibility as it is a leap of faith--faith that our men and women will read and follow material instructions to the letter and allow discretion to be the better part of valor when planning for the elements.

And what a pleasure to have one's faith rewarded, time and again.  We are proud to offer a three-year warranty on all exterior work, mindful that our ability to do so is a direct function of the attention to detail and superior customer service practiced by all of our house painters.  They make us look great, and of course, they do that by taking the care to make your house look great!

Growing up in New England, one feels a certain obligation towards sarcasm and the greater tickle at the back of its throat we charitably call cynicism.  Maybe it's the harsh winters, maybe it's the baffling political machinery, maybe it's just what we do--whatever the impetus, there's a black, bitten humor particular to these parts.

I'm of the opinion that sarcasm and cynicism are like salt: a dash makes the dish; more than a handful renders the meal inedible.  Without belaboring my time on the soapbox, I'll note how happy I was to hear Conan O'Brien's closing thoughts from his last Tonight Show:

"All I ask of you is one thing: please don't be cynical. I hate cynicism -- it's my least favorite quality and it doesn't lead anywhere," he concluded. "Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you're kind, amazing things will happen."

I think Conan's talking about the pitfalls of cynicism as a strategy, a lens through which we view and engage with our world, and to that end we at Catchlight endeavor towards what customer service maven Jeanne Bliss posits as the first of five decisions that set beloved companies apart: We decide to believe in our customers.  From her book I Love You More Than My Dog:

"Beloved companies...decide to believe.  They believe their employees and they believe their customers.  And they practice this by suspending cynicism.  By deciding to trust customers, they are freed from extra rules, policies, and layers of bureaucracy that create a barrier between them and their customers."

And in large part, we are able to put this decision into practice daily because of our men and women in the field.  We are privileged to send out Boston's best house painters, as kind as they are skilled, to be sure, but more still, as willing to listen to their customers as they are capable of acting on your wishes.

Nigel puts it very succinctly in this entry: we take credit for our hires, but our men and women deserve all manner of hosannas for their kindnesses in the field each and every day.

From our company page (emphasis mine): "Your home is your greatest investment, a pride and a joy, the realization of dreams and hard work: at Catchlight, Inc., its beautification and restoration is, quite simply, our craft--the fine art of house painting."

I don't think it's too much of a stretch to guess that most of our customers see the duality of a house painting project in a similar light: beautification and restoration; art and practicality.

Today, I'd like to suggest a third function: the painting project as a diagnostic.  And sue me for excessive kitsch if you like, but I'll cop to it--I got the idea from an old episode of The Brady Bunch the other day.  You see, Mike and Carol were painting the bedroom, the hallway, some such, and at episode's end (before Mike went in for the kiss), Carol said "well now that we've painted the bedroom, we're going to have to do (this, that, or the other thing)."  I suppose that's less a diagnostic than a terrifically resilient stereotype at work, but my larger point stands; as often as not, the painting project doesn't so much pull a room together as it indicates just how much pulling together may be in the offing.

It's a good first step sometimes, this wall painting business.  And we're happy to lead your home improvement charge by sending out a crew of Boston's best painters to get your work done.