I come from a long line of painters and decorators.

Joseph (Joe)  Wilhide - Started his painting business in 1890;
Roger Layman started his company in 1947;
Ronald Layman, Sr. started his company in 1970; and
Ronald Layman Jr., I started my company in 1996.

All of these years I thought it all started with my grandfather, but I was wrong.  After talking with my father (Ron Sr.), I found out it began with my great grandfather around the year 1890.  My great grandfather Joseph (Joe) Wilhide was a farmer in Frederick County, MD and would paint the out buildings on the family farm.  One day a neighboring farmer asked Joe if he would paint his barns.  He soon found out that there was a demand for painting, so he began his painting business.  Back then they worked out of a horse and buggy, and Joe would load all of his painting tools (brushes and ladders, rollers and sprayers where not around yet) and travel to a customer’s farm and paint the buildings.  As part of the compensation, the customers housed and fed Joe and his painting crew, as well as feed and water his horses.  Joe then began to paint the interiors of the homes for his customers.  At about the turn of the century, Joe started stenciling walls and ceilings.  My father (Ron Sr.) told me that many years ago when he was removing wallpaper from an old farm house in Walkersville, MD, he found some old stenciling on the home’s walls.  He went home and told his mother and father about the find and after a few questions from his mother, she stated that she remembered helping her dad stencil that kitchen when she was a little girl.

My grandfather (Roger) had worked for my great grandfather, until the war broke out and people stopped spending money on painting. He then went to work for the foundry in Frederick City ( Frederick Iron and Steel).  After a few years he left the foundry and started painting in Baltimore for a company called Puff & Shoe.  My father tells me that this was one of the largest painting and decorating companies around at the time and that they even had their own scaffold farm where they grew the trees and milled the wood.  It was here that my grandfather stated to play with wood graining techniques.  After a few years of driving back and forth from Baltimore, my grandfather decided to start Roger Layman painting.  That was in the year 1947.  He provided the home and business owners of Frederick County with painting, wall papering and limited decorative painting services.  He owned his business up until the late 1970's.

My father was the typical son of a painter.  He would work for my grandfather after school, on weekends and during the summer.  He did this until he graduated high school.  Then after a few years in the Marine Corps, including a tour in Vietnam, he came home and went to work for a power company.  After a few years of that work, he decided to go back into the painting business and took over my grandfather’s company.

As a youngster, I remember my mom would take me to visit my father at his projects and to see how things were going.  I remember visiting my father on a church restoration project in Walkersville.  He had the whole interior scaffold so he could reach the 30 ft ceiling.  He was working with his crew and was showing me how to trace the existing ceiling patterns so he could later cut new stencils and re-paint the patterns.  I remember another project, a restoration project in Frederick City on a beautiful historic building on Church Street.  Dad had the whole exterior scaffold, which was 40 feet high.  He and his crew were removing the layers of old paint down to the bare wood.  I remember sneaking up the scaffold when I thought no one was looking, but I got caught.  I remember one of the painters, who was my uncle, climbed up to the top and tried to show off in front of my sister and I.  He then became scared of the height and hugged the scaffold like a cat all the way down.  From that day on they all called him “Grace,” because he had the grace of a cat on ladders and scaffold.

I remember my father wood graining front doors and me trying to figure out how he was doing it.  He always said, “keep your eyes and ears open and your mouth shut and one day I'll show you, now get back to work.”  I remember rolling the glue on many a roll of wallpaper and watching him hang the paper.  Every Saturday, on school breaks and during the summers, I would sweep, scrape and sand for my dad.  The first time he let me paint anything I was cutting in the walls in an office of the foundry at Frederick Iron and Steel.  It was the same foundry my grandfather worked in during the war.  I didn't think much of it at the time, but thinking back is pretty cool.  Another fun point of interest was when my sister moved into her first apartment.  It was the same apartment my parents lived in when they got married.  When we helped her move in, my father looked at the walls and said “look at that.”  I said “what?”  He said “your grandfather painted these walls.”  I said “how do you know?”  He said “well I helped him brush these walls with oil semi gloss enamel.”  Sure enough, you could see the brush marks.  When we asked the owner, he said that he never needed to paint the walls.  He would just wash them down when they got dirty.

After graduating from high school, I didn't want to paint, so I decided to go to college for a few years and I worked in a few restaurants.  We'll I got tired of waiting tables, so I asked my father for a job.  Well, he did what any father would do, he made me work hard for little money.  Then one day after arguing over something silly, he said “you seem to know it all, go start your own business.”  So I did and six months later I was out of business.  So I learned the greatest single thing every. I learned from my mistakes.  I looked at everything I did wrong and made sure not to do it again.  I started small in the back of my old 1986 Chevy pick up truck.  I worked on exteriors, and 2 months later hired my first employee.  Then I started to contact local builders and general contractors, and 6 years later I was hanging sheet rock and painting 400 homes a year.  All the while providing homeowners custom painting services.  I had never really focused on faux painting.  Then one day we had a drought and city stopped issuing building permits, so work slowed dramatically.  I unfortunately had to let go of several good employees.  Then one day I received a phone call from a friend working on a new Casino project in West Virginia and they needed a painter.  I said sure I'm interested.  He said there is some kind of faux painting in the specifications.  I said well I’ll take a look.  The next thing I know I am faux painting an entire casino and bar, and back doing what excites me.  After that project I started to focus on faux painting services and I was busier then every and people loved the work that I was doing.  I was so busy applying the finishes that I had my painters preparing surfaces and base painting.  I had to then start training them on how to apply the finishes.  In 1999, I opened a training studio and started to teach classes to all that want to learn.

I currently run my painting and decorating business, and the school from my studio in downtown Frederick, MD.

I am still working on this so please forgive my grammar and spelling.  I am looking for pictures and will add them soon.  I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I did writing it!

Happy painting,

Ron