Paint Job

These days, there are no simple answers when it comes to paint. Apart from the systems that provide light, heat and water, probably no single element of house construction has changed as much over the past 100 years -- and it's still changing. So when do-it-yourselfers have questions about paint, they're almost certain to be good ones.A Baltimore reader offers a perfect example: "We have owned a 160-year-old wood clapboard house for two years, and the exterior needs a paint job," he writes.

The Hampstead Volunteer Fire Engine and Hose Co. is sporting a new ambulance, while the Lineboro Volunteer Fire Co. is waiting for its new ambulance to be repainted and put into service.Both ambulances replace lighter-weight vehicles and are built to keep up with increasing demands for higher levels of medical care.After 18 months of legwork, Hampstead put its 1993 International medium-duty ambulance in service the first week of December, replacing a 1988 Ford light-duty ambulance."We got the medium-duty chassis to upgrade the payload we have to carry and upgrade the brakes," said Jack Brown, emergency medical services captain.

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. -- As Steve Garcia rumbled slowly down State Street on a recent evening here, he was treated more like a one-man parade than a police officer working a beat.A little boy looked up from his ice cream cone and sighed, "Awesome!" A carload of people flashed him the thumbs-up sign. Patrons of an open-air bar jumped up and cheered.The object of admiration wasn't the 14-year veteran of the Santa Barbara Police Department but rather, his fancy wheels.Sporting a flashy paint job, low-slung tires, mag wheels and chromed engine parts, Garcia's car is not your standard-issue police unit.

One thing about the days getting longer and the light getting brighter: It makes winter-tired walls, windows and woodwork look dingier than ever. I have a theory that one of the primal human urges of spring is a desire to mix a luscious new color and splash it over everything in sight.There is a tremendous satisfaction in making something look brand-new and sassy instead of grimy and dispirited. The paint stores, well aware of this basic human need, are responding with all kinds of sales, new gadgets, and good advice for the neophyte as well as the advanced painter.

We have always taken our interior roller-type painting pretty seriously. Neither of us can ever remember laying in a couple of six-packs and some pizza and inviting over 10 friends (randomly chosen for their willingness to participate) for a painting party.By all means invite friends to help -- if you know they're good (or at least as good as you are). But you may not want to turn partying people loose on the walls you have just spent days (or weeks) carefully plastering smooth. No matter how meticulous your plaster or drywall finishing has been, a bad paint job will make the walls look awful.

Extensive preparation and painstaking application are the ying and yang of a good interior paint job. They're equally important -- skimping on one will ruin the other.How well the surface is prepared will determine how well the paint goes on; how well the paint goes on will determine whether the finished surface looks professional or amateurish.Of course you can hire professionals to do the painting, with a result that is swift and (very likely) neat.But in fact, painting is one of the easier skills to learn and it's very rewarding when you see the transformation you've wrought in a room.