Fourteen Years! Part One

I am excited about this year because 2013 marks The Larkin Painting Company’s fourteenth year in business!  How quickly time has passed.  The journey from there to here has been amazing.  Looking back, I can hardly believe it.  People often ask how I got started, so now is a great time to share with you the story of how we began.

After working for several years for Orcutt Painting, I decided to develop my own painting business.  Back then, there was no such thing as The Larkin Painting Company.  It was October 1998.  It was simply me, Bill Larkin, unincorporated.  After a while, I began to take on so many projects that it was becoming harder to complete the work alone.  I needed someone skilled who could help me as the business grew.  I asked a painter who was helping out for a few weeks if he knew anyone.  He told me about an eighteen year-old “kid from Brazil” who would be studying English and wanted to work his way through school.

I asked the painter to tell “the kid” to meet me when I returned from vacation.  He did.  His name was Thiago Fernandes.  He didn’t know a word of English.   I didn’t know a word of Portuguese.  That Monday morning, I had no jobs scheduled since I had just arrived home.  My wife, Maureen, suggested I give him a day’s pay and tell him to come back tomorrow.  The following day he showed up again-early.  He climbed into the work truck, armed with what was to become our lifeline for the first few months that we were to know each other – his Portuguese to English translation book.  And there we were, sitting in the truck with no real way to communicate.  We were about to embark on a project, that like all successful painting projects, required substantial and unambiguous communication.  I asked myself how in the world was this going to work?  At that moment, I never could have foreseen how sitting in that work truck with Thiago would help establish the roots of The Larkin Painting Company.

Check in with us next week for the conclusion of our story.  In the meantime, here’s a picture of Thiago, “the eighteen year-old kid from Brazil”.

A recent picture of Thiago and I at his wedding

Be well,

Bill