How to Book a Kitchen Painter for Christmas
I don’t know who gets busier around now, Santa’s elves or me.
On the one hand you have the elves. They are finishing billions of presents and putting the final touches to a logistics plan that needs to guarantee overnight deliveries to half a billion children worldwide by Christmas morning.
On the other hand, there is me. Racing to hand paint kitchens before Christmas.
Who is busier, I ask you?
OK—it’s the elves, isn’t it?
I should have chosen a better example.
Oh, I know...
Who is busier around Christmas? Me or the Easter Bunny?
Hah!
There is a good reason why I bring this up. I’m very fortunate that I get booked up three or four months ahead of time. I’ve even been hired to paint kitchens five or six months in advance. I still find it hard to tell people they will have to wait that long for me. And it never ceases to amaze me when people are kind enough to say they are happy to do so.
I tell my young children how patient people are. They answer back, “Then why do we always have to hurry up for you and mummy?”
I tell them, “Because.”
They ask, “Why?”
I say, “Because.”
They ask, “Why?”
And before you know it, I’ve lost another ten minutes of my life stuck in a circular argument with a eight-year-old and a six-year-old that I can’t win. Nightmare.
Book your kitchen painter as soon as you can
Having your kitchen painted so it looks fabulous for the festive season is something everybody looks forward to. But it does require a bit of planning. My advice is to make arrangements with your kitchen painter as soon as possible. If you can, drop them a line to enquire about availability towards the end of summer or early autumn at the latest.
That sounds bonkers, I know. But it really is the best way to avoid disappointment if you have your heart set on a particular painter. (Hopefully me.)
Also, you don’t want your painter (hopefully me—did I say that already?) working too close to Christmas. You don’t want a situation in which the paint is practically still drying on Christmas morning.
On top of which, another kitchen job I’m working on might overrun. There are many factors beyond my control. That can have a cascading effect, pushing out the start date of subsequent jobs. I try to make up time over the weekends to prevent this from happening, but it isn’t always possible. Especially when the Six Nations or the autumn internationals are on. Or if I get into a particularly competitive and drawn-out Why-Because argument with the children. (They are relentless.)
Another important consideration is travel. I’ll do a full blog post on this in the future. Here I’ll limit myself to saying that I paint kitchens all over Ireland (Dublin is my most common away-from-home destination). Often that means staying overnight, so you need to consider travel time and the availability of accommodation. Both of which can become tight in the run up to Christmas.
To close out this post, let me distill my advice down to two points:
1) Book your kitchen painter as early as you can.
2) Don’t get into Why-Because arguments with children.