How I started in the business Part 2

My visits to Sedro were always productive, even if they might have been unhealthy. I would skip the gym the 4 or 5 days I was up there and would cleave fairly closely to Tim's all starch diet. In the mornings we would clear away what we had worked on the day before and make a space to grill egg-sandwiches- Tim's unvarying breakfast. The potato bread made them doughy, the butter and American cheese made them unctuous. Bacon on the side. I'd make coffee, but Tim drank local Soda. He actually preferred generic brands to name brands and poor cuts of meat to better. He'd prepare chicken thighs in oily Thai peanut sauce mounded on a plateful of white rice. Dinner was seldom before 11 at night when we would watch the old Kilgallen/Cerf "What's My Line" with a plate on each of our laps. Sometimes we'd eat spaghetti drenched in Alfredo sauce.
The kitchen was also where new purchases were cleaned. Small parts, scrubbed, scraped and buffed. Next to the loaf of potato bread and the pizza rotisserie there would be several open cans of Howard's Restor-a-finish, which was extraordinarily noxious. Occasionally Watco oil too, as we could never seem to predict what would be effective. There was nearly always a can of Brasso as we polished plastics and removed adhesives with it. There were open squeeze bottles of lighter fluid which was a quick label-remover. Gunk-off. Goo-gone. Some of these removers would melt through fiberglass or plastic. Brasso was the safest. There were always lots of soaking brushes and hardware soaking. Lots of tacky finishes. When it was winter the final finishes had to be applied in the house or they would never dry. In summer our final coats were applied in the driveway. The tiny brackets that were scattered on pieces we finished in summer were the legs of adventurous and unlucky bugs.
We started refinishing metal barrister bookcases for the owner of the store where we consigned. He paid well but the work was not easy. Barrister bookcases were manufactured by several firms, most notably Globe-Wernicke who made both the traditional oak stacking units and industrial metal units. The metal ones went through several design changes, and each change brought us a new puzzle in disassembly. It wasn't just Globe-Wernicke cases. Each company had their own proprietary method, and each had their own irreplaceable pieces. The glass was held in place by rubber strips in some, metal flanges in others, thick rubber bumpers in most. the bumpers were particular and a bumper from one side of a pane of glass could not be swapped with one from the other side. The inner sides of the cases had to be pried away in one model, and then slid back after the refinishing without scarring the bottom surfaces.
Some of the units we would brush with sandpaper after we had stripped them and then coat them with oil and poly. They could not be touched after the original paint had been removed, so we would move them with towels. The oil on our fingers would have left ineradicable prints that would soon rust. Other units we would paint with appliance epoxy. It came in white and black only and had peculiar requirements. It could not be touched up. A second coat would begin to dissolve the first. Tim had such a steady hand that he was able to make an initial pass to get the surface tacky and then finish with the exact same amount of paint distributed evenly. We could only do this when the sun was hot enough to bake the paint on in a mirror-like finish. It is nearly impossible to resist shortening the passes with the spray can, and if you were to double back the result would be a glossy, fluid switchback distinct from the rest of the surface. I didn't have the patience to do it well. After a few sets we decided that i would disassemble them and strip them and he would paint them and assemble them.
When we weren't working on these commissioned projects, we'd spend most of each day shopping for our inventory. There were 5 or 6 second-hand stores and thrift shops that Tim would visit daily. He had an eagle eye. He could see things sitting in a undifferentiated mass in front of us that were invisible to me. Even as he pointed them out, they would generally look worthless to me and only as he began to work on them did they appear naturally to possess great quality and value. It was very nearly wizardry: seeing the prince in the frog.