2009-02-12

Dominick’s Painting: a 26-year family tradition

By Stephanie Parker

Father and son painting team Dominick and Nick Verciglio have not only maintained a 26-year tradition of showing up promptly at jobs when called, but they’ve also formed a legal partnership to serve their clients better.

“No job is too large or two small,” they explained recently. “We will paint anything as small as a closet or furniture and have painted a 10,000-square-foot conference center. Our prices are reasonable and we show up.”

This reliable team has painted from Midland to Del Rio and at locations all around Bandera County. Their expertise has landed the pair commercial work at Johnny Boyle’s shopping center, Flying L and homes and ranches.

Painting together is old news for the Verciglios. Dominick moved to Bandera in 1982 and Nick, a 1988 Bandera High School graduate, began working with his dad when he was 12.

Nick’s family includes wife Melisa; daughter Chloe, 12; and sons Anthony, 10, and Benjamin, 8. Chloe will begin working in the family business this summer. Her goal is to become an interior designer.

What is new for Dominick’s Painting and Paper Hanging is the partnership. Father and son are now equal partners, which allows Nick to estimate jobs and shoulder more responsibility.
“You like your sons to go into business with you,” Dominick explained. “I hope one day one of his kids will go into the business with us.”

Dominick’s Painting specializes in special finishes, water blasting and mildew removal, staining furniture – and painting everything from window and door frames and trim to appliances. They once painted a car with a brush.

Dominick is originally from Chicago where he supervised 48 people and painted when it was 80 degrees below zero.
He still remembers his first Texas job. “I showed up to paint in Medina and this lady accused me of being a Yankee because I talked funny. Well, I’ve given up my Yankee citizenship. I’m a Texan now.”

Both father and son have experienced the bizarre and unusual in their profession. “I’ve taken switch covers off in houses,” Dominick related, “and had giant centipedes fall out.”

Nick, however, wins the bizarre contest. While airborne in a bucket, a swarm of bees ran into the bucket and flowed over him.

At a Medina ranch, Nick told his dad, “I can usually recognize any kind of a deer – but what is that?” It was a kangaroo.
The Dominicks have showed up for painting jobs at ranches and found exotic animals like a rhino and buffaloes. One buffalo calf, mistaking Nick’s bleach bottle for its milk bottle, chased Nick back to the truck.

Nick has painted while dangling from a rope off the edge of a house at Comanche Cliff. He has painted metal 60 feet up in the air. But even those harrowing experiences do not daunt his pleasure at working in a partnership with his dad.

Besides, when the “boss” is also “Dad,” it’s fun to get even with harmless little pranks like filling Dad’s gloves with paint.

Dominick’s Painting can be reached at 830-510-4910 or 830-688-1477.