Where to start. I wanted my house painted inside and out as we were selling it. First off, he quoted me a higher price on the inside painting because he said he uses the best high quality paint from Sherman Williams. First day of painting, he buys paint from somewhere else, low grade generic paint. When I asked him about it, he said that would mean an extra trip to Wellsville and he would have to charge me for it. I showed his helper the contract and made him realize they needed to. Then he wanted to charge me more because he would have to start again. Again, I said no. Again his helper told him he can't do that. When they started sanding, I asked about dust and will it go into the other rooms, and he said they wet sand. I came in one afternoon to find them dry sanding, with no plastic up and dust everywhere in my living room. We put plastic up, but the damage was already done. They did not complete every area of painting because "I would have to run and buy more paint and it's not worth it". So I ended up buying some paint and doing it myself. When they did the walls, rather than putting tape on the moldings and rolling the paint all the way down, he said he would brush paint the last 2 inches or so and we would never see the difference. Boy, did it look like crap. I ended up taping up the molding and rolling the rest of it to blend it in.
This was just the inside issues.
When it came for the outside, he wanted to power wash the house first as it would save time. I explained to him that it is an older house and pressure washing may cause problems with the old wood, and he said he would keep the pressure down low. Again I came home to find them power washing the house standing only 2-3 feet away from the house, and part of the wood facia had been blown in and I had water in my back porch running down the walls that were just painted. I told him to sand the rest. The next day I came out of the living room area and found him scraping the screen of one of my back windows. I asked him what he was doing, and he said his helper splashed paint on the screen and he was trying to remove it. The problem was, he was using a metal brush on a fiberglass screen. Does anyone else realize what this will do to the screen other than me? I now had a hole in the screen that was not there before.
The job took a little longer than expected, and at the end, he approaches me and asks me to "Contribute an extra $50 to his helper and he would add $50, because he did such a great job on the 2nd floor of the outside". I said the cost you quoted me should have included that, and he proceeded to try and make me feel like the bad guy. I then changed the contract to add the money and handed the helper the extra $50 directly and told him his boss wanted me to pay more because you did such a good job. read more
