In a message dated 3/17/00 8:53:44 AM Eastern Standard Time, [log in to unmask]
writes:

> sorry Ken, for whatever angst it is that you have not yet revealed the
causes of regarding the following product

Dan,

In time I can learn to forgive & forget and I suppose I could do the same for
Benjamin Moore -- though for this lifetime I prefer Sherwin Williams when
given an "or equal".

I'm not obsessive about paint. I'm not a painter. I really don't know diddly
about paint. I'm a masonry contractor that tries to do the best I know, with
usually limited information, no facility for in-depth research and not enough
time to satisfy the diverse requirements of my customers. Painting cast iron
facades in NYC at-one-time I reasoned I could maybe do better than the
foreign nationals that do not speak English.

I don't usually relate in my head to products based on their performance
characteristics but on my feeling of comfort with whomever specified the
products. If the Humor Czar tells me that he wants to use Gypsy Wonder
Smear-All Color Magic Latex then I say to myself, "I don't know what this
stuff is, but if he says so it must be good." In practice this seems to get
me in trouble because later I find out HC first found out about GWSACML from
one of my employees, the guy we hired last week from one of the neighborhood
coalitions, and HC figures if I use the stuff then it must be good. Truth is,
in all honesty, HC would not do this without calling me and asking 4,536
questions. Simply being asked too many questions in too few minutes can drive
product selection beyond absurdity and I have been know to see how long I can
make the calls last simply for the hope of entertainment on a dull day.

About 10 years ago the NY Landmarks Preservation Commission seemed to have a
love affair going with Benjamin Moore. If you wrote in a work proposal that
you were going to use BM H756 alkyd-enamel then it was like a linguistic code
that meant the contractor must know something about histo presto. For a time
there I thought that historic preservation simply meant that you knew how to
parrot the correct set of words and were halfway decent at maintenance. There
were not quite so many Columbia Preservation Grads running around NYC and
there were a lot more dumber contractors (you only have to run a little bit
faster than the other guy when a tiger is chasing).

BM enhanced their position by having an ARCHITECTURAL TECHNICAL office on
Canal Street where you could go down with the little paint samples from the
neighborhood paint distributor, the Polish place with the mannequin outside
that waves a roller up and down in the air, and if you said the right words
in the correct order get BM to hand over these large 8" x 6" swatches. The
large swatches were a lot more impressive when held up against a cast iron
facade than the little swatches that required a set of binoculars to see from
across the street, and usually having BIG swatches proved that you were
"in-the'know". It also showed that you were smarter than the other
contractors because you could figure out an address and how to use the Yellow
Pages. So, we painted a lot of cast iron facades with BM paints, not knowing
a whole heck of a lot about forensic painting, up until the last one that we
did with BM paints.

Concurrent with all this we became aware of LEAD. This put a heavy crunch on
our conscience as we like our employees and enjoy seeing them from day to day
and really do hope to go to Jamaica ar Cancun when we are old farts and not
get mugged by anybody's mother and still be able to read and conprehend a
Dick & Jane Chase Spot book. We no longer do cast iron facades also because
we figure the foreign nationals are going to make themselves dumber faster
despite that life is a zero sum waiting game -- we all get to be dead, some
faster than others. Why Bucannan complains so much I don't really know.

So, the last facade, it also was concurrent with our painting another facade
the wrong color {PINK}... but that is another story and has nothing to do
with our work at the Lesbian & Gay Community Services Center or with Hilary
Clinton being the only Dem marching in the St. Paddies Day Parade this year.
It was concurrent with the VOC compliance fad. Volatile Organic Compounds are
nasty things we don't want gassing off into the atmosphere, masonite cows
being trouble enough. For a while all 50 states, including NY & NJ, had
completely different ideas about what VOC compliance meant. Iraq and the
Bophal bandits don't seem to give a tit. Everyone was confused. The
manufacturers for paint, as well as for sealants, were busy reformulating.
Reformulating meant something about changing the chemical composition of
their products... it also meant a sudden impact on the dumb and not quite so
dumb struggling contractors trying to find their way through life. Don't
forget we had a recession following Black Monday, the last big bubble burst.
and staying in business was the most important objective. If asked to paint a
cast iron facade one did not sit back and say, "Oh, do I know anything about
how to do this?" Any job that contributed to meeting payroll and keeping
families fed , housed, and clothed was considered fair game.

We did about two dozen cast iron paint jobs before we got tired of them. I
never considered the work historic preservation. I did consider that what we
were doing was coating and facade stabilization. My idea, particularly in the
SOHO Cast Iron District where the properties are primarily owned by boomer
artists (a terribly frugal minded set of people that cannot necessarily be
expected to care if the non-English speaking craftspeople poison themselves,
as long as it does not get to the artiste's own kids) was to provide a
reasonable sealant and paint job, often on buildings that had not been
painted since original erection in the 19th century when the imitators of
James Bogardus were fussing with their payroll -- I love AFTER MARKET.

We painted the lower floor of a cast iron building down on Broome Street
nextdoor to a Chinese brussel sprout distributor using BM paints. The back
alley of the place, where we painted the fire escape, may or may not have
been featured in a Keefer Southerland movie. I digress. Specified prep (an
excess of prep that needed to be slightly corrected a few times to meet
budget), specified primer, specified undercoat and specified top coat applied
during near perfect weather conditions. A classic example of failure, it all
uniformly alligatored.

From an aesthetic point of view it was perfect alligatoring. The customer was
not so happy. I never had quite so much trouble talking to a customer since I
had brushed an unauthorized rendering of mating Mallards, it was meant to be
a farm scene, into the stucco coat on the street side of their fireplace
chimney. It is fortunate that I am not such a good artist.

BM was called in and instead of admitting that the problem had to do with
"reformulation", which it did, we got a song & dance regarding improper
application, improper weather, poor prep etc. At this point we faced the
prospect of having to strip the paint from the facade, which we did, and
repainting at our cost, which we did with Sherwin-Williams, which did not
alligator and never showed a single sign of wanting to alligator. Not such a
pleasant loss of money when we had been driven by an obsessive compulsive
building owner to OVER watch the project to begin with. It was an
embarassment that, in the end, cost us the customer -- which we rationalized
as a blessing. It was also one of those experiences that gets around in the
histo presto community and leads people to think you are as dumb as you feel.
One of Twybil's partners had recommended us to begin with.

It may be unpopular but I have a problem with dishonesty. I felt that BM was
not honest and did not stand behind the failure of their product. I realize
that I was dealing with one individual and that they may have missrepresented
BM policy. For all I know the next week the guy was out selling used Volvos
in Summit, NJ, it happens. I don't care. I'm not in business so I can go out
and get shucked by a salesman.

I had similar problems with other projects with other products at about the
same time and in each case the manufacturer readily and honestly admitted,
some a bit slower than others and with a bit more tooth pulling, that there
was a problem with the VOC reformulation of their products. I was able to
keep face, I was able to retain my position of integrity with my customers,
and I still do business with these manufacturers and I will go out of my way
to speak well of my honest experience of their products. I don't have
anything poor to say about BM products, I simply make the statement that I
would prefer not to use them if I have a choice to use another product.

I've not always been reasonable or rational in my approach to product
manufacturers... Michael Edison, who has my respect for putting up with me at
times, can attest to this. In my life I have given up a lot of vices. I
stopped using hallucinogens quite a while back, I stopped excessive drinking,
I stopped smoking (fill in the blank), I learned to shave, wear a tie and I
swear less often, except when driving. I don't have as many temper fits and
the phones last longer now that I don't throw them at walls. I avoid sugars
and try to be nice to people as often as possible -- what I will not do is
use BM paints.

On weekends I have been having a good time playing with Ralph Loren's crinkle
paint, as sold at Home Depot, and high-quality boat varnish.

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