A group of nearly 40 painters used their brushes and tools this past weekend to freshen up a home and brighten the day for a North Vancouver woman fighting Stage 4 cancer.
Experienced and rookie painters from Student Works Painting, a company that helps train new painters and learn the business before entering the “real world,” came to Andrea Mundie’s home in the Blueridge neighbourhood Friday to scrape away old paint, sand and prime the surfaces and slap on two coats of cream-coloured paint around the house.
The project is to help train new painters, but also part of an annual charity initiative to raise funds for people with multiple sclerosis. The company picks up to eight houses across Western Canada each year for a free paint job.
“We try to find people who have MS, but we also try to find as many people that are in need of painting and can’t do it themselves,” said Tomoki Okamura, district manager for Student Works Painting.
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Student Works Painting also collects $5 donations from franchisees working at the job sites and matches that total to give to the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada, Okamura said.
On top of Student Works Painting chipping in on the good deed, Dulux Paints donated their paints to help complete the project.
The company heard about Mundie after her daughter booked a painting job through the North Vancouver franchisee and heard they were looking for a house to repaint. The company got in touch with Mundie to see if here house fit the criteria for a charity job – nothing too challenging or too small – and they got rolling from there.
“It just worked out and we thought that it was an amazing opportunity,” Okamura said.
When Mundie found out about the painting project, she was really excited but found it difficult to accept the help herself.
“It’s taken me a little bit of time to learn that it’s a good thing to say yes to things, because that’s not at all like an experience that I’ve really had in my life,” Mundie said. “It’s always sort of felt like I needed to do everything on my own.”
Mundie found out in January she has Stage 4 cancer after being in remission for a couple years. She was first diagnosed in 2022, and in January this year found out she had brain metastasis, a tumour that appears when cancer in one part of your body spreads to your brain.
Doctors were able to remove the tumour in January, but the cancer still remains in her body.
The painting project was a great way to bond with her four kids as they picked the colours for the bungalow. They went for happy and cheery, including turning a black front door yellow.
“When we saw it after it was done, it just looks so clean. Something as simple as paint just changes the whole look of everything,” said Mundie. “I think it was really nice to see there were so many people here doing all of this, and they just seemed like they were really happy to be doing it.”
The experience has been reflective for her, reminding her of the work she has been doing on the board of Vancouver-based non-profit Coast Mental Health for the last eight years. It was also a good reminder to accept help once in a while.
“When you don’t accept stuff like that from people, you kind of take that experience away from them too, so it just reminded me that it’s OK to need something sometimes,” Mundie said.
“It’s a bit more than just a painting business,” Okamura said. “We want to obviously be a bigger part of it and show that affection to the community, more than just painting houses.”
Abby Luciano is the Indigenous and civic affairs reporter for the North Shore News. This reporting beat is made possible by the Local Journalism Initiative.
