Go Paint Something!

Another title for this post could be…How We Faux Painted 200,000+ Square Feet of Highway Retaining Walls in Gatlinburg, Tennessee!

This is a project that I completed back in 2006 but the job was huge and the lessons learned will stand the test of time so I had to share this with you guys.

Let me think back…it’s October 2005 and the setting is Gatlinburg, TN.

First, let me say this: we are damn glad this project is done. Secondly, we are wholeheartedly looking forward to the next one. How’s that for mixed feelings! Kinda like the feelings of most of the people who worked with us on this project: “We really had fun! You might have another one? We know exactly who you should call: someone else!”

My name is Michael Cooper, and for over 20 years I have specialized in painting murals. Especially, large exterior murals. The bigger the better. And for one reason or another, I have been fascinated by retaining walls on the sides of highways. (OK, most ALL blank walls!) All of this raw, poured expanse of concrete.

Most folks don’t give it a second thought. I, however, consider it all a “blank canvas.” Of course, thinking about it and doing something are two completely different actions. I was real good at thinking about it, mouthing off to my wife, Mickie, at every opportunity, as to what should be done with various walls and overpasses. Read: delusions of grandeur.

Years of talk ensued, but no action. Then, one day, we were out shopping for some trees and shrubs for the yard (for those who know us, you know that this happens a lot more than it should), and struck up a conversation with another couple. It just so happened that the husband worked for TDOT (Tennessee Department of Transportation}. Oh, what the hell: “Who would I talk to about painting finishes or murals on retaining walls on the sides of highways?” I waited for the usual, “Huh?” with accompanying blank stare, but to my astonishment, he gave me a name! Wrote it down on a nursery price list, folded it neatly, filed it in my wallet…

…and promptly forgot about it. (hey – I had holes to dig!)

Well, holes can only take you so far. A few weeks later, when Mickie was bugging me about the relationship between painting and eating, I decided to do a little marketing. I made a few standard calls to the same old tired designers and architects, and then remembered the TDOT lead. I located the folded note (funny, wasn’t in my wallet anymore), and made the call.

Turned out that the person I called couldn’t help me, (surprise) but she gave me the number of someone who could! (Another surprise!) I was blown away – I KNEW the person whose name she gave! I had worked with her on various committees throughout the years, but had no clue that she had taken this new position – one that was a liaison with the public, trying to soften TDOT’s image as unapproachable and aloof.

And she was very interested in talking with me. (Surprise number three)

We set up a meeting so that I could present my portfolio to upper management. I showed up with my pictures, talked the talk, and basically explained how I could really spruce up some of their really offending walls. (OK, spruce up might be a stretch. I actually suggested that on one of their walls that had recently been rebuilt after collapsing, I could paint a large Band-Aid across a faux crack. They actually laughed. Wouldn’t do it, but laughed anyway.)

We ended the meeting on a good note, with me feeling that in the next year or two we might come up with some kind of “test case.” As I was leaving, they pulled me aside: “We’d like you to take a look at a project we have going in Gatlinburg.” Really? Really.

They emailed me about six pictures of some walls that they said were at the entrance to the National Park at the eastern end of Tennessee, just southeast of Knoxville, about 4 hours away from our studio in Franklin, a suburb of Nashville. I really couldn’t tell much from the digital photos, as they had no scale, and they only showed portions of walls. No way I could give them any finish or mural suggestions, or especially any budget figures. I had to see them in person.

Road trip.

Got a friend of mine, we jumped in my truck, and we took off. 4 hours later we pulled up into Gatlinburg, looking for these walls , which were on Highway 321, right off the main drag. I’m looking for 4 or 5 walls, maybe 20’ high. Max. See a few. Nope, wrong color. Supposed to be raw concrete. We went through a construction zone, turned a corner, and…

Ohmygawd. We were awestruck. Seriously. Stopped the truck, right there in the middle of traffic.  There were retaining walls as far as we could see. Seriously. And they were HUGE! Some of these walls were over 40’ high. Dozens of them. And some of the weirdest shapes for walls that I had ever seen. A veritable sea of undulating concrete. It was no wonder that the townsfolk called it their “Concrete Canyon.”

We went about measuring these behemoths, just to get a handle on what I was up against. Took us 4 hours just to measure the length! Kinda guessed on the height. By the time we were finished, the total square footage was well over 200,000 s.f. of concrete, including the 42” parapet walls (the short ones that keep you from falling off of the sidewalk into the woods.) Line ‘em all up, and we had over a mile and a half of walls. Want to know how much this was? Take your standard 10’h by 15’w living room wall, and multiply it by about…oh, say…1350! (Give or take a couple of windows.)

So, now I knew what I was working with. That was a start. Now came the fun part. I was asked to work as a consultant on what was to be known as their “Context Sensitive Solution project (CSS), the first of 15 of these types of projects that were near and dear to the Governor. They were really trying hard to have TDOT listen to the people who were affected by all of their construction projects. Doing something to these obnoxious walls was a major concern. Boy, talk about being in the right place at the right time!

So, I worked with the committee on coming up with some suitable ideas for the walls. Everything  from simple paint finishes, all the way to detailed, involved murals. (Mickie even suggested we propose a Roadrunner-type tunnel, but I thought that the traffic control folks might not go for it. Ya think?)

Now, there were 8 people in the group that I was in, plus 14 of the citizen’s representatives, or Resource Team, so you all know what I went through in coming up with ideas: the dreaded “Design By Committee.” What was supposed to take only a couple of months, ended up taking…well…let’s put it this way. From the time of my initial meeting, until the actual award of the contract, over two and a half years had elapsed. I soon knew exactly what people meant when they said that things moved “at the speed of State.”

Fast forward. After multiple samples and ideas, designs were finally approved (a 4-5 color blended finish on the retaining walls, and a trompe l’oeil stacked stone design for the parapets), contracts were let, and time frames were established. I figured that with the right people and enough equipment, we could finish the project in about two months.

Mickie and I had traveled all the way to British Columbia, Canada, to talk to the people who were going to be manufacturing the 2500 gallons of silicate dispersion paint. Wanted to make sure that not only could they handle the order, but to make sure that they could get it out on time, and in the consistency that we required. No problems, we were assured. Piece of cake on all counts.

More on that little fabrication later.

So now we had to figure out the logistics. We were going to need about 12 artists a day throughout the project, teach them what and how to paint, and do it the way I needed it done. Mickie put the word out on the web, talked to some former students, talked it up at places like The Faux Event and MuralsPlus, and were absolutely blown away at the response.

People from all over the United States and Canada wanted to paint on these walls! Now understand, these were successful artists in their own right, wanting to take extended time away from their current projects, spouses and families to work on one of the weirdest projects I had ever heard of. And work with me and Mickie! Had these people completely lost their minds? OK, that’s another topic.

Back to the logistics.

We not only had to feed them, but house them as well. OK, Mickie said, let’s do it right. We rented two large mountain-top condos close to the jobsite, right across from each other, (with fabulous views, hot tubs, pool tables, cable TV, etc.) and retained a caterer for lunch and dinner, delivering meals either to the jobsite or to the condo. Such a deal. We provided the food for people to make their own breakfasts.

For supplies, I contacted my favorite paint dealer, and bought dozens of varying lengths of roller extensions, a couple of cases of roller cages, scores of roller covers, a pressure washer, two high-volume airless sprayers (1.6 gallons per minute!) and power roller accessories (which we really never used. The paint was too thick and the poles were too heavy. Need any pressure roller accessories?)

We also had to have water supplied to us along the road, so we borrowed a dilapidated water truck from the contractor, as well as used custom attachments to connect water hoses to the fire hydrants. That meant about 1200 feet on contractor-grade garden hose.

Plus rolling chairs and stools for the parapets, harnesses for the 45’ and 60’ lifts that we had to drive, and all manner of tools, including brushes, cups, lids, 5-gallon can openers (Mickie’s favorite tool), spatulas, electric drills, portable drills, mixer attachments, weedeaters, blowers, trimmers, a chain saw, a large tool chest, high-pressure hoses, locks, chains, three rolling carts, a 15’ trailer, and two 40’ portable storage “pods” to house all of this, PLUS 2500 gallons of paint, stored in 5 gallon, 70 pound buckets.

All of the above was exclusive of all of the “office” equipment that we had to bring, as Mickie set up a temporary office in our bedroom, because, hey, folks gotta be paid, bills gotta be paid, and the world keeps turning.

Oh, and did I mention that the paint had to be kept from freezing? Since we started the project in October, I figured that the temperatures would be dropping in the mountains, so we had to be prepared. I purchased a couple of electric heaters to run at night in the pod (connected by 150’ of extension cord to the nearest outlet). Only it didn’t work when the temps got below 30 degrees, so we had to get an electric kerosene torpedo heater that we had to run all night.

This is what I meant by “logistics”.

Time to paint. Actually got to Gatlinburg the first of October, 2005. Started out with only a handful of people, brave souls that they were. Except for the son of one of my neighbors (God love him!), these were basically women who had never done more than faux some bedrooms. At most they had been on a step ladder. It was my job to teach them how to work a 3000 psi pressure washer, weedeaters, commercial blowers, and how to connect all of the necessary hoses to fire hydrants 500’ away. Oh, and drive 60’ articulated lifts.

And did I tell you that one of the women and one of the men were 72 year olds with solid white hair? People driving by thought we had raided a retirement center!

Well…it worked! And let me tell you, the best parts were the comments from their husbands, after seeing pictures of their little sweethearts in OSHA-approved harnesses driving heavy machinery 50’ up in the air! Definitely new respect on the home front.

Good news: they finished prepping the walls in less than a week. Bad news: we still didn’t have any paint. Long stories, tons of excuses, lots of broken promises, bitching, screaming, but in the end, no paint. After sitting around literally doing nothing for a week, the girls decided that they needed to split. I totally understood. Hated to see them go, but that’s life.

A partial shipment of paint finally arrived a few days later. New crew arrived at the same time, and we got to it. Painted everything we could see with a coat of white as a primer. Tried using the power rollers, but they proved too slow and cumbersome, so we tried the sprayers. Man, what a difference. With a combination of people rolling from the ground, while we manned the lifts and sprayed what they couldn’t reach, we really made some headway. Until we ran out of paint. Remember, I said a partial shipment.

Again, we waited days for the next load. Even paid an exorbitant amount for expedited shipping. Got it there, and went at it again. Made great time. In fact, actually finished priming in about 10 days. Now we were ready for the finish coats.

But we had no paint! All they had been sending us was white. The frustration was palpable. Had to wait again for the next shipment of colors. And for something to thin it with. What they had been sending us was the consistency of drywall mud. Not exactly what I specified. Again we waited.

By the time the next load arrived, we only had enough time to finish a few parapet walls. The weather had turned too cold to paint (under 41 degrees), so we had to pack it up for the season. Been on the jobsite for six weeks. Waiting for paint for a total of three of those weeks. I was fried. It was a good thing we had to leave. I was ready to take someone’s head off.

Of course, by then we had to make arrangements to take the remaining paint and two pods of supplies back to my heated studio, as well as redirect the delivery of the final shipment of paint, because it would have arrived at the jobsite after we had already gone! You know, there’s a lesson here somewhere. Anyway, got a caravan up of people who were going through Nashville, and loaded up. Had a truck pick up the paint separately and deliver it to the studio.

Fast forward to April 1. That’s the date that I set to start up again. Same condos, same caterer, and a lot of the same artists. Some new ones actually brought their spouses to help. Barely knew which end of a roller to use, but jumped in nevertheless. (And did a fabulous job!)

I told everyone that learning to paint these finishes wasn’t brain surgery. Seriously. The retaining walls were simply four or five colors blended wet on the wall, while the parapets were a blend of three colors for the background, painting in the grout lines, and then adding highlights and shadows. Once you understood what was happening, it was a piece of cake. OK, a lot of cakes. But it really wasn’t that difficult.

Let me tell you – this crew kicked some major butt. Working 16’ extension rollers in the hot sun, or 10 foot extensions on the lifts, staying one step ahead of the rain, sometimes for 12 hour shifts, fighting bugs, traffic (Git ‘er done!), exhaust, egos and more, I was truly amazed. Actually, so was the client. They weren’t expecting us to be done until, oh, about July, 2009. I think everyone was shocked when we painted the final patch of concrete by moonlight on Saturday night, April 29th, 2006.

I told Mickie that we should be done in about a month. We actually finished the last wall exactly one month to the day after we started. (Big pat on the back for me.) Of course, this time we had paint. Amazing what a difference having the proper supplies makes.

I know I’ve rambled a bit, but this little synopsis in no way covers everything that went on in this project. Hmmm…let’s see what I missed covering: snakes, bears, insects, lizards, rats, serenading, jam sessions, beer, scotch, rain, rumors, innuendos, clashing egos, hurt feelings, proud feelings, lost lift keys, lost phones, found phones (like, six months later, on the side of the highway – and it still works!), life long friendships, Easter Dinner, night noises, bug bites, sunburns, blisters, sore muscles, twisted ankles, hiking, fireplace climbing, lethal cherries, sightseeing, elusive morell mushrooms…whew!

Being from Nashville, I know there’s probably a song here somewhere.

How ‘bout, “Another Brick in the Wall?”

To your success,
Michael Cooper

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!