I've never written a bad Yelp review before--and didn't really plan to--until I came across some photos of the damage caused by this company this past summer. My husband and I are DIYers, so hiring professionals to paint our 1-bedroom apartment in Manhattan was a splurge. Their quote was higher than another we got, but when a neighbor told us a friend had a good experience with PNP Craftsmen, we bit the bullet. WORST DECISION EVER.
The "foreman" assigned to us was slow, sloppy, and incompetent. We were told the prep work would take 2 days, but it never ended; by day three, the foreman was working alone, sanding, then painting, then sanding some more. Obviously, this compromised the fresh paint. Because he never completed a single area before moving on to the next, I had to leave the apartment each day (I work from home) and put the dog in day care. The entire project took 8 days; each evening I'd return to the apartment and burst into tears. There was no regard whatsoever for our possessions. The furniture and rug were only partially covered by thin plastic drop cloths, exposing areas to dust, dirt, plaster. Damp rags and open bags of sheetrock littered the room, and pieces of drywall were propped up against our valuable antiques. One evening, we found an open bag of potato chips on the couch and a container of chicken (the remainder of the painter's lunch) on the uncovered living room rug. He used our Miele vacuum cleaner rather than his industrial HEPA one (that's illegal, by the way) and burned out the motor by filling it with plaster and not replacing the bag. Still covered in dust, the appliance was shoved in the back of our closet without explanation. Then one evening we came home to find deep gouges in our walnut floors--a result of moving our wine fridge sans a drop cloth or board.
Because of the sanding tsunami, my husband and I began having breathing problems in the apartment, so after three days, we asked the manager of the company when the sanding/prep work would be done. Surprised that it wasn't, he told us the apartment should be clean and free of dust at the end of each working day and that he'd speak to the painter. Despite an apology text from the painter, things never improved. We started emailing and calling the manager on a daily basis, reporting on the progress (or lack thereof). One day, he oversaw the painter's work for a few hours, but agreed that he should have come to the apartment sooner. He also admitted that the painter's background wasn't in residential indoor painting. What????
If the paint job would have been satisfactory, my husband and I might have been less upset. But it was appallingly bad--think multiple runs, missed spots, and gloppy, uneven trim. Each day I'd put a piece of blue tape on the areas that needed to be corrected or point them out to the painter, and he'd grudgingly go back over them. (He seemed to know he was being fired, so he wasn't in the best mood.) At the job's end, the always-apologetic manager sent over a faux painter to "repair" the floor with wood filler and paint. (It looked okay at first, but after repeated cleanings, the paint has lifted, so now they just look like thick scratches.)
Technically, we were due to pay the final third of the price of the job--about $1,700, minus the cost of the vacuum cleaner. The owner of the company sent an apologetic note and offered to sent a more experienced painter over to fix the issues. Then we were also asked to "humbly" pay the remainder of the bill--with a discount of about $300 for the stress it had caused us. You may understand why we didn't jump at that opportunity. After this experience, we don't trust the company, and never want to see any of its employees in our apartment again. read more
