| A day in the life of a plasterer |
Jul 4, 2008 1:50 pm
815 Views | Part 2
Monday, Monday
My alarm will nearly wake the dead. Monday it almost had to. We normally start at seven sometimes six am but today we are meeting to drive out of town at 5am. I pull myself out of the Cave and throw on some pants to let the three fuzzies out. Arrrgh I hate waking up in the dark. Freaking daylight savings time. It's not natural to go to sleep when it's light and wake up when it's dark.
Start the hot water for my yummy chocolate cappuccino. Open my breakfast pepsi, down a headache tablet, (did I mention I tried a few brandies to make me go to sleep Sunday night?) Took my vitamins and made my coffee and let the kids in.
Sat down and contemplated my first cigarette of the day. Yeah, yeah I know. Finally woke up enough to put on my work clothes and make my "lunch". My bosses don't take breaks so lunch consists of a pepsi and three bottles of water and a bag of peanuts I can eat on the run.
Got to the meeting place at 4:50 and everyone else was thirty minutes late. Arrrgh! Wish I'd thought of that. We make it to the job site at 6. A huge house nestled up in the foothills near the mountains. But not close enough to stay any cooler. It's 6 am and already 65 degrees. I know it's going to get toasty today.
One boss says, "lets try to stay in the shade all day".
Cool! I agree. Except that the shady side of the building includes a forty by thirty foot ceiling to be stuccoed. If you want to know how it feels to stucco a ceiling, just try pushing a hammer against a ceiling for a couple of hours. And imagine cement falling back in your face while you're doing it.
To make matters worse, this particular job will involve a very thin acrylic finish and the base coat needs to be perfect. We do this by rubbing a neoprene float over and over the base coat just after it sets. Remember the movie The Karate Kid? It's kinda like "Wax on wax off". The wing gets a little tired.
I wore a pedometer once 'cause I was curious about how many miles I put on in a day. On a typical building, I walk about eight miles a day back and forth from the mud board to the wall, up and down on the scaffold, and toting stuff around the building. On this house it was probably double that. No wonder one never sees a fat plasterer.
Didn't make it to a hundred degrees. Only ninety eight. We caught a break. | |
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