I have been teaching Painting and decorating at a local college for many years and in 2014 I decided I wanted to go part time (teaching) and get back to what I love doing – decorating.
To me it made complete sense to spray as much as possible, mainly because it’s quicker and you get a really good finish, especially with water based paints. I found that there was plenty of work around and before I knew it I was really busy.
I have been teaching apprentices for about 25 years and because of this I know a lot of decorators in my local area. Some are self employed and some have now got their own companies. One or two approached me and asked if I would be prepared to do some onsite training to show them how to get going with airless spraying. This was something I had not really considered but I thought it would be a great thing to do.
Having done a couple of onsite training sessions I thought it would be good if I could give the decorators who had done the training a reference book at the end of the day so that they could look information up after I had gone. I was sure that there would be loads of books out there that covered airless spraying for the decorator.
However after looking on Amazon I soon realised that there were no books out there on spraying for decorators. I considered using a manufactures booklet (one that get when you buy a sprayer) but I found that these have been written by engineers and not decorators and were quite difficult to read and relate to.
So I decided to write my own.
If I am honest I didn’t think I would pull it off, I am pretty busy and finding time to write was going to be difficult. I wrote once a week on a Monday night and I found that I really enjoyed it. Before long (6 months) I had something that looked like a book. I sent this off to the printers and got my proof copy back through the post.
This was quite exciting, (I know I am a bit sad) it still needed a cover and some editing but I was nearly there. I took a photo of the book and then sent a tweet announcing the arrival of the book and I was amazed to find that a lot of people wanted a copy.
Time has gone by and I have used the book a lot, many decorators have read it and I have had lots of great feedback which has been nice.
I think the book opens up spraying to decorators in plain English and answers a lot of people’s fears and objections.
Click on the MyPaintbrush photograph to buy the book
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