The Typical Paint Job in Malta

The Maltese are very good at a lot of things. But painting a room, flat or house is not one of them. Yes, they get the paint on the wall-but also on the light fixtures, switches, sockets, faucet, sinks, countertops and nice tiled or wooden floors.

The Maltese are just bad at finishing things. Yes, it means they often start things and don't finish-like most of the new flats and apartment buildings (called blocks) which they start building and then leave as empty "shells." But-even more strange--they're not good at the technique of finishing a house-things like making sure that the grout in the bathroom tub, showers and sinks doesn't spill over onto the tile or ceramic, and that the grout is a thin clean line-not a thick yuck that looks like a first grader got hold of a tube of glue or toothpaste.

The amazing thing is that you find these finishing flaws even in flats that are considered luxurious. Our new flat is supposed to be almost brand new-just lived in one time before us. The guy was repainting the terrace-and he refused to cover the nice tile outside with a tarp. We even said we would supply him with one or put it down ourselves. He got irritated and said that he had one.

Fine, he had one. But I guess we made the mistake of not asking him to use it. The result? Our ready-to-move-into flat has paint in all the wrong places, including on the beautiful terrace floor. Now we have to go along after the fact and try to remove the paint from the tiles without ruining them.

In the bedroom, the guy painted one of the walls a deep brown, It's beautiful. But he didn't cover any of the electric sockets or fancy white light switches. So now each one looks like it's been sprinkled with brown cinnamon. We have to carefully scrape off each one with our nails.

Wow-everyone should have such problems, right? But we're paying a lot of money to move into a modern flat because we got sick of the old townhouse we lived in which was falling down around us because the landlord refused to fix a single thing. So when the new landlord said this place would be totally clean for us, we expected clean. Now all the light switches look dirty.

My point is that the Maltese-again, while very good at many things-just seem to do a half a job when they fix or finish off an apartment or house.

Here's the best example of all. There's a guy who owns a small grocery/junk shop a few doors down from our previous residence. It's always been a mess-crowded shelves, narrow aisles, rotten food--but it's very convenient so people reluctantly buy their stuff from him. The other day I was surprised to see that he was having the place painted-clean, new white paint.

Wow-good for A-at last!

And then I noticed that the painters were pushing aside the products and angling their paint brushes in between cans of tuna and boxes of cereal and feminine pads to paint the walls behind the shelves-without having to remove the shelves.

When I asked him why he wasn't removing the shelves to paint, he asked me, "Why should I?" And then I remembered where I was: Malta.

Ilene lives and teaches EFL in Malta and is author of An-American-in-Malta.com.