We are men who lead, serve, protect and defend, whether we are giving out Coats for Kids, donating wheelchairs, lending a helping hand in disaster relief efforts, supporting local pregnancy centers or providing top-quality financial products.
Brother Knight Hector Rubio asked Knight Hands if we could help him with some painting on his sister’s house located in Dallas near Love field. When he and I looked at the home, I realized that this would entail much more than just painting a few areas. Diana Rubio, Hector’s sister, main concern was the condition of the pealing eaves on the front of the home and the window canopies that were marred and chipped. But after surveying the entire home, we decided to repair the following items:
So on Friday November 21, 2025, John Owen, Joe Eubank, Dan Murphy, Hector Rubio and I began the process of completing the list of item to repair on her home. Our main objective on Friday was to put one coat of enamel paint on the areas the needed enamel paint – the canopies, the front porch railing and front door trim. That sound pretty simple except that before we could apply paint there was hours of prep work. First we removed the two window canopies and the shutters. The prep work involved scrapping and sanding off the old paint on the canopies and the front porch railing and front door trim. We started work about 8:30am and by 1:30pm we had accomplished our mission. In addition, we had found the time to replace much of the rotted corner trim pieces and replaced rotted fascia pieces as well. Kudos to Joe Eubank and John Owen for their relentless effort to get the canopies scrapped and painted. Hector was everywhere but his main accomplishment was grinding off the chipped paint on front door railing as well as removing the canopies and shutter. Dan Murphy was the main guy replacing the rotted corner trim pieces and building a new window sill.
On Saturday morning, November 22nd, we again began about 8:30am and this day one of our jobs was to scrape and paint the eaves and rafter ends on the front of the home and give them two coats of white paint. In addition we needed to put a second coat of enamel paint on everything we painted yesterday. Joel Lopez, and Moises Martinez took on the job of scraping and painting the eaves while Jesse Zuniga gave the front porch railing a second coat of enamel paint as well as the front door trim. Again, Hector Rubio was everywhere, but mainly he scraped and painted the window trim on the front of the home and added a second coat of paint to the shutters. He also was the main man with the screw gun when we re-install the canopies and the shutters – he was a busy man, for sure. John Espree and Rod Kinard finished the job of replacing rotted wood around the back door, a couple windows and a couple corners and then pained all those areas. Again, after a short break for a pizza lunch, we finished about 1:30pm. It took us a good while just to load all the tools and supplies back into my truck.
As always during Knight Hand jobs there was an abundant amount of good natured chatter coupled with a generous dose of laughter. One of the laughing points was the condition of my pants – I am not the cleanest person while I’m working. Moises Martinez will need a new tee shirt and Joel had a good amount of paint on his face. Thankfully there were no injuries. Diana was absolutely thrilled with the final outcome. Thank you to all the guys who worked on this project. You should be proud of your soft hearts and strong hands. You embodied the 1st principle of the Knights of Columbus – charity.
