Birth of a Superhero
Great moments in building history: Insulation Woman
Being a female painter in the construction business is not always easy. I’ve spent almost 20 years trying to convince chauvinistic male contractors that the only body parts required for a good paint job are two hands and a brain. Therefore, women are as well-equipped for the task as men. Some believe it; others don’t. One who does is the builder of the most expensive homes in the area. As a result, I was hired to do the painting in a $700,000 house. I worked hard to get there, and I was proud to have the job.
The people and the working conditions were perfect from the beginning except for an aging plasterer who thinks women belong at home, not on construction sites. He referred to me as “the little lady painter” and asked repeatedly how I was planning to paint the crown molding around the 20-ft. high family-room ceiling. “Probably with a brush and ladder,” I answered with less patience on each query. I was glad when he finished his plastering and left me to work with just the builder, the carpenter and Denny, one of my employees.
Part of my job was to paint the 105 removable wooden window grids that grace the huge house. When I went to get the grid out of the attic window, I crossed a small floored area and stood on the edge of an expanse of loose white batt insulation that covered the joists and laid between me and the attic window. It looked like an enormous field of cotton. I stepped carefully through the insulation as I crossed the joists toward the window, but I didn’t step carefully enough. I tripped and plunged through the insulation, between the joists and through the plaster ceiling.
The crash brought my three male co-workers running. They found me sitting on the floor of the bedroom below; I was covered with the insulation that stuck to my hair and my clothes and surrounded by pieces of broken plaster. While Denny picked insulation out of my hair, I took stock of my injuries. I was relieved to find that they were limited to badly bruised legs and a shattered ego. Then I looked up. Jagged pieces of plaster hung from the gaping hole in the ceiling while insulation fell from the attic like lazy snowflakes.
The builder looked from the pile of “little lady painter,” insulation and plaster to the hole in the ceiling and back again. I couldn’t imagine what he was going to say. My misery must have been apparent even through the insulation because he didn’t say anything. He smiled. Then he started to chuckle. Then he gave way to peals of laughter that everyone else joined, including me. When you take a dive through an expensive ceiling in an expensive house, your reaction is either laughing or crying. Laughing is better.
Through the next week the teasing and tormenting reached epic proportions. I became known as Insulation Woman, the superhero who crashes through walls or ceilings to save the day when the archenemy Boredom threatens a construction site.
The powers and talents of Insulation Woman grew daily. It was suggested that she could probably fall through a ceiling and play the accordion at the same time. Hours were devoted to choosing a trademark song for Insulation Woman and her accordion. “Insulation Lady of Spain” was a runner-up to the old country classic “Please Help Me I’m Falling.” When I got too quiet while painting window grids in the basement, the carpenter came down to see if I had fallen through the concrete floor. When a 15-in. square piece of plaster had to be removed to install a laundry chute, the plaster was given to me with a bow on it. Denny suggested that I take care of the family room by jumping through the ceiling and painting the crown molding on my way past it.
Then the inevitable happened. The plasterer arrived to repair the ceiling I ruined. At the time I was eating lunch with the three creators of Insulation Woman. We directed the plasterer to the site of the crime. He soon stomped into our lunchroom. “Who the hell made that mess?” he demanded to know.
I braced myself for a tirade on the proper place for stupid women when he found out that I was the guilty party. Instead, my three co-workers said firmly and in unison, “I did.”
The plasterer silently retreated to his work while I finished my peanut-butter sandwich and decided that there were three superheroes on that job. Insulation Woman wasn’t one of them.
—Jeanette Wolff, Latrobe, Pennsylvania
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