This month we celebrate 14! A fourteen-year-old daughter and a 14-year-old business. The day we came home from the hospital with our new baby, we had a brand-new contractor’s license waiting for us.
I didn’t mean to become a contractor. My father and my uncles were and are, builders. I grew up around construction sites. Then college, then activist work in support of indigenous communities resisting industrial projects that impacted their ancestral lands. And then I went back to the land to apprentice in a small, local CSA (Community Supported Agriculture). Local, local, local. There is nothing more important than supporting local endeavors!
It was during this time that Ernesto and I began our life together and started to make plans. With his lifelong skills in the trades, my business expertise, and our shared values, we knew that we could deliver a different experience for our clients. And so, I became a painting contractor. As our company and children, we were a part of founding a co-operative, Spanish immersion preschool.
I am an idealist. I believe that heart and intention come first. Our lives and business are intentionally centered around enhancing home, family, and community.
Painting a home or a public building, especially doing so using sustainable materials and practices, is an act of preservation as well as beautification and self-care. It enhances people’s individual lives and our communities. Wherever I live and whatever I do, I want to make that place better.
We do that in our Company with the way we go about our work and the way we run our business. Our staff is family within a family-owned company. We promote from within. Many of our painters are brothers and cousins and many have been with us since we started. And this year we have begun training the next generation, having sons work alongside their fathers, and having our daughter Sofia work in our office.
Through Arana Craftsman Painters, Ernesto and I strive to strengthen the community around us, the Bay Area, where we live, play, and raise our children.
~ Catherine