Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Painting the Floor(boards)

photos by Tamás Fehér

While walking through a boatyard on the Giudecca, Tamás noticed a guy applying paint to the floorboards of a boat.  Of course with most Venetian boats you remove the boards first. 
If it had been my job, I would have done the painting on a bench or table - anything to avoid all that crouching and bending over, but hey, maybe this guy had to stretch out his back or something.

Perhaps this guy was intent on keeping the pieces in the right order. 
After all, the floorboards of a Venetian boat are kind of like a jigsaw puzzle.  Each and every piece is shaped just right for the place that it goes (and it only goes in that place).  If Tamás really wanted to mess with this guy,
he could have waited till the guy was just about to paint, and mixed them up...maybe turned one or two over.

To paint a surface that people are going to walk on requires a sturdy paint and plenty of cure time.  I wonder how long this guy waited before putting the boards in place.

For more on floorboards, see my post from December 7th of last year entitled "Red".

1 comment:

Tamás said...

The nastiest thing would have been to wait until he finished painting and then to call up a graffiti "artist" to tag the floor panels with a spray can of red paint.

Few buses and trains avoid that fate where I live, but luckily North Italy is not that tagged yet.