I had an all-around terrible experience with DunnRite painting. My wood house was built in 1920. I hired them to touch up some spots in the interior where I had had some new windows installed and to strip and re-paint the exterior window trim and a door that was chipping.
When the boss Mark St. John came by to give me a quote, he seemed really competent and knowledgeable, and he had a lead-safe certification, and I felt good about it, so I hired him.
I waited for about 6 weeks for him to get finished with other jobs, and during that time, communication wasn't great. I finally heard from him around 2pm on a Sunday saying they were ready to start work the following day. I asked what time they would be arriving, and he didn't respond to my message until 7pm that evening, saying that they would be starting at 7am the next morning. Great, thanks for the warning.
He arrived with his crew, went over the work to be done, and then he left, leaving just his crew to do the work. He did not give me a written contract.
Right away, I wasn't super confident in the work the crew was doing. They were getting dust everywhere and weren't even wearing simple dust masks (so much for lead-safe practices), they didn't take down the door I'd asked them to strip and paint but were instead just kind of scraping away at it as it was flopping around on its hinges. They didn't strip or fully scrape off the chipping paint, and I didn't realize what was going on until they had instead filled in the cracks between the chipping paint with wood filler and then primed over it using an interior-rated primer.
After they left for the day, I inspected the work more carefully and decided that I was NOT satisfied and that I needed to say something about it. I texted Mark saying I wasn't happy and sent him some photos, asking him to come over the following morning to go over the work and discuss a solution. I followed up a few hours later with an e-mail.
My full list of complaints was as follows:
- Failure to adequately scrape or otherwise remove existing paint from surfaces, instead doing only minimal scraping and some sanding and then priming over surfaces that still had chipping paint and applying wood filler to conceal chipping paint
- Failure to adequately control sanding dust inside the house when working outside by closing the windows or applying plastic covers to the insides of the windows when they needed to remain open
- Failure to adequately cover floors and furniture inside when working inside
- Failure to vacuum or adequately wipe dust from surfaces prior to painting
- Using a shellac-based interior-rated primer on large exterior surfaces
- Reluctance to remove door hardware prior to painting
- Painting portions of the kitchen window trim that were not requested and without first preparing surfaces
- Applying paint in the bathroom that was lumpy
- Neglecting details, such as the edges of the exterior trim
I heard nothing all that evening. The next morning, nobody showed up at 7 like they said they would. Around 8:30, one of the crew guys showed up and said he was just there to collect his stuff and that somebody else would be finishing the job. I still had heard nothing from the boss. I texted Mark saying that the guy had come and gone and asked what was going on. Nothing. Hours later, he wrote back and said "I'm not sure let me check". Never heard from him again.
That evening, I e-mailed him to officially let him know he was fired, to give him my list of complaints (above), and to tell him that I was not going to pay him anything. Still never heard back from him, but at this point, I didn't want to. My guess is he figured that it was cheaper and easier for him to cut his losses for a day's labor and just disappear rather than come back and fix the mess the guys made. read more