Paul Bass Photo
Luciano Reyes slipped on a Carhartt sweatshirt and a second pair of gloves Tuesday to rescue a paint job on Brownell Street before the temperatures turned colder.
Someone else had painted the house on Brownell between Maple and Edgewood in the summer. That someone else apparently skipped town before finishing.
So the call went out to Reyes to patch up the paint on the porch and the left side of the three-story home.
“I hate painting,” Reyes, who is 62 and moved to Connecticut from Puerto Rico at the age of 12, admitted during a conversation on the “Word on the Street” segment of WNHH FM’s “LoveBabz LoveTalk” program before getting to work. But “hey, money’s money. Money’s always green.”
And he does like working. He retired a year and a half ago after 25 years as a union construction worker. Then he started working part-time, as his own boss. “The word on the street” is to call him if you need help with sheetrocking or, say, a dropped ceiling (his preferred tasks) or paint, he said. He tries to line up a gig each day if he can. It supplements his Social Security.
“When you retire, if you don’t do nothing, if you don’t find something to do, you die. If you have worked all your life, you don’t stop,” Reyes said.
“I’m my own boss. You want something to do, I come and do it.”
To help pass the time as he paints Tuesday, the father of two grown daughters planned as usual to listen to radio preachers on his phone. He particularly likes T.D. Jakes.
His rule of thumb is that it’s too cold to paint — too cold for him and for the paint — when the temperature drops below 50. The temperature was in the 30s Tuesday morning when Reyes started working. He said he was counting on the forecasted rise to 49 degrees, which is close enough.
Click on the video to watch the full conversation with Luciano Reyes on the “Word on the Street” segment of WNHH FM’s “LoveBabz LoveTalk” program. Click here to subscribe to WNHH FM’s “LoveBabz LoveTalk” and here to subscribe to other WNHH programs.
Click here for previous “Word on the Street” episodes and write-ups.
It's best not to apply latex if the temperature is below 50F. The ideal range is 60F-70F. If it is too cold, the paint will not adhere and cure properly.