A big job done bit by bit
By PAUL BOURGEOIS
Star-Telegram staff writer

S-T/BRUCE MAXWELL

ARLINGTON -- Painting brick is a problem.

It's also uncommon because for most people who buy a brick building, one of the big reasons for doing so is that brick never needs painting.

But most people are not Domenico Seminara.

"I am the most unique individual you have ever seen," said Seminara, 63, a passionate Italian-American who owns, among other things, a vacant 4,300-square-foot, two-story brick building at 824 Avenue H.

While most people hire painters with rollers to slop paint over the entire building -- bricks, mortar and all -- Seminara, who owns SRE Corp., a specialty restaurant equipment supply house in Arlington, had two employees use small brushes to paint the bricks -- tens of thousands of them -- one by one.

He figures that it took 10 to 12 seconds per brick. A couple of professional painters with rollers could probably have done the entire building in a day.

"This building took two guys five weeks, every day, eight hours a day. When it's worth it, you spend the time and money," he said. It was finished Friday.

And where did he find such dedicated painters?

"There are two kinds of painters in the world," said Seminara, a native of Calabria, Italy. "There are those who work for themselves and those who work for me fixing cappuccino machines, and when we don't have enough business fixing cappuccino machines, I say, 'Let's paint bricks.'"

He said: "It was a lousy gray. An uninspiring gray, the deadest of all colors." Now each brick is dark red.

This was not the first time he's had the building painted.

Two years ago his guys covered one wall with the Italian flag -- red, white and green -- and the American flag sort of intertwined.

While it was colorful, "people said it looked uninspiring. People didn't understand the color," Seminara said.

He said the current project is worth the investment. Friends and passers-by are raving about the building's new look, he said.

"I'm getting a lot of recognition," Seminara said.

pbourgeois@star-telegram.com
Paul Bourgeois, 817-548-5412