DISASTER Clean UP Paint Spills: Job site Disasters

hey today we're out here working on a commercial job uh just doing the prep work and i want to talk about something and show you a video of what happened we had a disaster out here disasters do occasionally strike and we're going to show you how we handled it and stuff so we spilled a gallon of paint right out here white paint on a black parking lot and you know i'm going to kind of walk you through you know what we did to resolve this situation you can watch the live video because we were filming out here and we didn't stop filming we just shot what we were doing to try to resolve the situation and don't panic anything can be fixed pretty much anything could be fixed but i'm going to show you you know some of life's um ups and downs when it comes to uh painting and stuff so it was a gallon of primer spilled right on the parking lots we just went through the process of gathering that paint up not trying to spear it around not getting a hose washing it all over the place gathered it up on cardboard the best we could and then started cleaning it up with rags and stuff and then water and sponges so you're gonna see this um throughout the video right now so check this out a disaster a disaster or a disaster on the commercial job out here with the paint life crew [Music] so you can see at this point in time we've got a spill here and one of the things i did is you just gather up the paint as much of the paint that i could and you know just to save time i'm not searching for any gloves i'm not i'm just using my bare hands i've got a cardboard that was um just at the job site and i grabbed that cardboard to help contain it and what's interesting here is you know this is all still usable paint that you can still use but this is a gallon of primer that was spilt and and if you can just gather up as much as you can by cupping your hands just cup it scoop it and put it right back in this bucket the big keys is to you know not panic and and just you work quickly but don't panic and any type of panic if there's you know customers around what they're gonna do is they're gonna sense that see that and then they're gonna begin to panic but if you just keep calm just working it cleaning up the mess as quickly and as efficiently as you can so i've contained it on this cardboard i've got some on the cardboard i've scooped up as much excess as i could put it inside my cut-in bucket now i'm going to begin using wet rags to begin wiping it up [Music] one thing you don't want to do is panic grab a hose and start using a hose to to clean up this mess because you'll just end up dispersing the product in a larger path and you know there was a storm drain right by here within probably 10 feet and we don't want this paint to go down the storm drain because this storm drain could be connected to the boise river and and you could just be adding contaminants to places you don't want it to go and it ended up leaving a big wider swath of paint you know on this parking lot right here so now just working quickly and efficiently i'm using cool water to start to wipe up this but once again one of the keys is you know when you're you've got a spill or a paint disaster is to you know not panic to you know stop you don't want to stop too long but just stop you'll think about what you're doing think about you're not creating you know worse of a disaster and how you're going to go about cleaning this up i've said it before and you know one of the big differences between a journeyman painter and a an apprentice is a journeyman painter just knows how to fix all of their mistakes so i just so happen to have a bunch of rags these are all just rags that you know i had in my vehicle that i'm just using clean water we had you know water faucet nearby and this is one of the you know when you're starting to paint on any job what i typically do is i start by filling up three buckets of water on a job site and having that water available you know for a disaster is one of the reasons why we you know have buckets filled up before we even start painting you can see this is a white primer on black asphalt and if you just keep you know working you can get this up and the thing is is to continue to use clean rags so i'm going to take my rags clean them get the paint up rinse them in water and continue to use clean rags another thing another tool you know you always want to have available as a painter is a wire brush and we use these wire brushes to clean our brushes with paint brushes and this wire brush will help agitate our paint get it up out of the surface you can see i'm just agitating it lifting it up and now just rinse my rags get clean rags and begin lifting up the pain again [Music] so i'll tell you a story we were on a job once and we had a big 60 foot lift you know a boom we're driving around and the delivery guy delivered our paint and we had a bunch of fives bunch of singles probably like 15 sitting down on the ground and one of the guys was driving the lift and he didn't see all the paint on the ground and he ran over the the buckets of paint and like some of them he went directly over them and they exploded like a bomb and though the building we were painting it was like a commercial building and one of one of them exploded and just shot we just got done painting the side of the building and it freaking blew paint everywhere we were like looking around going what in the hell happened it was freaking crazy he knew like after like he heard kaboom and all of a sudden paint was flying everywhere and he didn't realize what had happened and um until yo and we did i came right around the corner people were yelling and i come around the corner and i was just like holy what happened and i was trying to figure out i couldn't even figure out and then i look at the lift and underneath the lift is all the paint and he ran over all the paint then you just dump dirt in the tracks and you won't even see it you see my initial reaction was grab a water hose but then you're going to take and make this swath of white going that direction and you'll have to clean it all that whole direction and then it's going to go into the sewer and and that one be good but then it's like okay if i just scoop it up i can still reuse it and and i was like okay i'll be able to just repaint the tar like right here i'll just go get some tar but now it's like coming off so what's interesting here now is you know i've got you know white paint i just went over to the planter got some dirt just to mix it in rub it in to help um you know basically you know make it look you know like the parking lot was you know instead of having a big clean spot now you know it would be more noticeable so now i'm just kind of rubbing the dirt in with the white paint and you can see how it kind of makes it go away and disappear a little bit more brushes well the whole thing it's like i always tell people it's like you don't panic you know i mean i started like getting a little nervous because they're the owner of the building standing there and his son standing there i'm like oh my god usually i don't have a crowd and i was like well this is about the worst case scenario you know primer on black asphalt you know that's gonna dry fast but we've done it on black rust before so it's been worse but it's fixed so i'll show you this is um the spot where we actually you know had our little disaster the day before and it's all dried up now and you know there's some dirt down there because i kind of just rub some dirt around in it to you know help dry up the paint but the spot is all gone once it rains or we get a hose out here rinse it up you'll never even know that it's gone there's a little bit of white and some of these cracks that i'll take and wire brush out but you know the disaster is cleaned up and resolved and you know once again it's one of those things don't panic um just calmly go about your business taking care of what you need to do and that's one of the big differences between your apprentices and journeyman painters is journeyman painters you have had a lot of these experiences know how to resolve and clean up you know just about any disaster there is so uh this was a matter of just you know getting the paint up collecting it up and we were actually still able to use it it was a primer gathered it up put it back into a bucket we didn't try to smear it around didn't try to spray it on down with water which would have just left you know a big swath of white going down into the drain then paint would have went into the drain we captured it didn't allow it to go into the drain so the biggest thing that you know if i can you know give you the biggest advice through this whole thing is just don't panic sit back um not necessarily relax and take your time but just calmly you know take care of the mistake and if you panic all it's going to do is draw attention to the situation draw the customer out then they're going to panic themselves if you take care of it like you know what you're doing then nobody else is going to panic so it's resolved if you got any tips or tricks how to resolve a spill how to resolve a disaster give it down in the comments section below i did post a picture on facebook of me cleaning up this mess got all kinds of people saying they've gone through the same exact thing and you know what life happens so i'm got some tips and tricks from other people out there how to resolve disasters and it helps us all out so thank you if you've enjoyed the video give us a thumbs up hit the subscribe button hit the notification bell if you want to see more disasters let us know down below because believe me i've had my fair share of disasters out there and i can talk about them in future videos we'll see you on our next video out