Strokes of genius

The Canvas 🖼️

Open Ealing Art Centre, wanted to paint their studio with a fresh coat of white paint so that they can open it up sooner for the next batch of art and education. Mandie, the operations manager of Open Ealing, explained the task. She had prepared everything that was needed for the task. We had rollers of different sizes, paint trays, two buckets of white paint, plastic wraps, clothes, and other materials to cover the floors, Latex gloves, plastic aprons, and paintbrushes.

Mandie said that we only needed to paint the walls up to a certain height and not the roofs which made things simpler for us.

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The Artists 🧑‍🎨

Sevan - Measured and poured the paint into the trays evenly and was the only one who used a paintbrush to cover the nooks and corners and touch-ups wherever needed.

Kash - Who has lots of experience with painting tasks, took a roller brush, and moved up and down against the walls.

Emmanuella - Who never painted before took a long roller brush and gained experience by the end of the day. She had paint on her face just a minute after her first stroke.

Emmanuella is on a roll and did 5 tasks in her first week of joining GoodGym

Divya - Our regular visitor from Hammersmith, owned a wall to his own and started painting aggressively.

Harvey - After completing the Gunnersbury park run and having tasted Liv's 250th park run celebration cake, arrived earlier to the task and was the well-prepped GoodGymer of the day. He put on his painting clothes before starting the mission.

Claire - Also joined us after completing her park run this morning and suggested the use of masking tape to cover the corners. She then come with up a bright idea to turn the lights on as it was a bit dark inside. She couldn't withstand the humidity and hotness after some rapid painting and cooled her down with cold water.

Madiha - Took a long roller brush and tried reaching the roof and covering as much as possible. She had previous experience with GoodGym painting as well. She couldn't stay for the group photo at the end.

Madhan - Took pictures at awkward angles for the reports and carefully painted to not spill paint on his GoodGym T-shirt. But ended up getting paint on his track pants instead.

GoodGym Ealing surprised Mandie and themselves by completing the painting task within an hour

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The Cleaners 🧼

As we had more than 30 minutes left in the task, Kash suggested that we would help wash the brushes and trays and the paint is water-based. But the washing area is a bit cramped and only one person can wash at a time.

Divya, Harvey, and Emmanuella started pouring the remaining paint back into the bucket.

Then Divya started washing the trays, while Kash was assisting him, and then Emmanuella joined Divya and left after cleaning the tray. Kash was explaining the process of cleaning paints from the roller to Emmanuella and after 20+ minutes of squeezing and scrubbing, they completed the cleanup process.

Claire was removing the masking tapes whereas Harvey after removing some paint off the floor set his eyes on a lovely chair and then couldn't stop posing as a 'Thinker'.

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Refreshment 🧉

Along with all the painting materials, we had some refreshments arranged for us. Ice cold water bottles, Elderflower sparking water, squash, biscuits, and brownies to name a few. Some of us treated ourselves to the refreshments. We also had the option of Tea/Coffee but we stick to cold water as it was humid and hot inside.

Sevan got engaged in a conversation with Mandie on how the Open Ealing operates. And Claire was doing her stretches supervised by Harvey. Madiha left earlier so she couldn't be part of the group picture. After the successful completion of the mission, everyone parted ways and half the team met after two hours for another mission in Acton Central.