We will be using this web site to promote our various interests, business and personal.
PAINTING On the business end we are primarily a Painting Contractor providing quality coatings to architectural surfaces for residential and remodel clients. Barney Smith Painting Contractor Inc has been in business since 1990 and is licensed and bonded in the state of Washington (contractor number BARNESP066CC). Currently the staff includes exclusively Barney and Leslie Smith. Because of our small employee base we can physically only do a couple of dozen projects a year - or less depending on job size, so if you are interested in hiring us for your painting project, check with our schedule. As we develop this site we will add pages with samples of jobs, specialty finishes, and information links.
BAMBOO Our secondary business/hobby interest is bamboo. We grow 26 different kind of temperate bamboos on our farm on Whidbey Island, see the bamboo page for the complete species list. A photo slide show features some of our varieties. Leslie also makes planters out of hyper-tufa, a concrete/peat moss container, with succulent plant arrangements. She also propogates plants from her garden that she finds particularily interesting. Updated postings of current plants to come.
TEXTILES Leslie's main hobby/craft/art interest is weaving. We will be showing off her projects as she makes them.
COMIC BOOKS Since the fourth grade Barney has been an avid comic book reader. Through comics he also taught himself how to draw generating his interest in art. Now after forty years of reading and collecting he is trying to divest himself of some of the piles of comics in the basement. Future updates will show off prized editions, and show some collections he would like to sell. He is also interested in setting up a Comic Book Readers' Club. Can't afford to buy everything on the shelf, so lets get together and swap.
FURNITURE We own a ten acre parcel in the middle of south Whidbey Island. Mainly it is a forest with a cleared area where we have a cabin in the works and grow our bamboo. Much of the forest is Alder. Alder in the northwest is considered a trash tree and a nuisance. It has a much shorter lifespan than the giant conifers around it which makes harvesting it OK - use it or lose it. Barney has slowly been cutting alder logs and slabbing them with an Alaskan chainsaw mill, and after a year or so of drying, turning the slabs into interesting rustic furniture. Photos to come.
ART Check out my slide show of past works, some published, some for fun from my halcyon days as art student/editorial artist/graphic designer.