Our issue with Adhesion Painting began after the project was complete. Geoff and his team painted our interior ceilings, walls, cabinets, and baseboards (May 2017 completion) and exterior trim (July 2017 completion). A very short time after the job was done, we started to notice that paint was cracking and peeling in a few areas at a time: inside a laundry room cupboard; bathroom ceiling; areas surrounding two skylights; hallway ceiling outside the master bedroom. The front door started peeling within a day or two of the completion of the job.
We've been busy with other home projects, but we made contact with Geoff to ask him to take a look, and he stopped by last weekend. As I took him around to show him the areas mentioned, he was responding with a quick, "Uh-huh. Uh-huh," as if to say, well, sure it's cracking and peeling all right.
As I lead Geoff down the hall, from behind me, he asked, "Did you guys really expect me to come back here and fix all of this for free?" Actually, I don't know exactly what we expected at that point. We were hoping to at least open a dialogue, and we had to have him see the areas of concern to do that. I certainly was NOT expecting a condescending response and a snippy attitude from someone to whom we had paid thousands of dollars just barely a year ago. We weren't wrangling for a free paint job after a house full of kids had been knocking against the walls for 10 years.
After we toured the problem areas, Geoff explained that he and his crew did everything right with regard to prep: quality product, appropriate process, required chemicals, etc. He simply didn't know why the paint was peeling; it just happened sometimes. Geoff explained that with "these old houses", you never know what's on those walls - could be water base, over oil base, over water base, etc. Sometimes paint just doesn't stick. He couldn't say why, and told me that any other painter would tell me the same thing. So there I was, standing with Geoff in my foyer, with the idea that some people are just meant to have peeling paint in their homes, like when you buy a car and it turns out to be a lemon.
Geoff then explained that the previous homeowner's son told him that he was doing some projects around the house for his mother so, "who knows what that guy might have put on the walls..." (The previous owner of our home used Adhesion to paint the exterior and master bathroom walls. That's how we found Geoff.)
Couple of points on Geoff's response:
1. This is a 1990 track home. It's not a turn of the century Victorian, where you might very well see oil base paint, on top of water base, on top of wallpaper, etc. At most there was one paint job between the one Adhesion did for us and the one that went on at the time of build.
2. Adhesion was given full access to the house during the bidding process. If there were concerns about the potential "layers upon layers" of paint on our walls & ceilings, we did not hear them at the time. Shouldn't painters be able to tell if there's going to be a likely issue with the paint adhering? Certainly, it's not a crapshoot for them, right?
3. Geoff scoffed at the idea that we'd want Adhesion to fix the areas for free, yet he told me he has no idea why the paint is peeling. Why would we pay him more money to come back and fix a problem he claims he can't solve, despite doing all the right prep work the first time?
Be very sure that you understand and are comfortable with his response when you ask what happens in the unlikely event that you see paint cracking and buckling a relatively short time after the job is done. read more
