Small Job Specialists

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He calls himself a small job specialist, but I'm not even sure he's qualified to screw in a light bulb.

I hired him to paint the ceilings and walls of a two-story foyer, adjoining dining room and upstairs hallway, all of which already had a coat of "builder's white".

He barely prepped the walls. He taped around ONE door and that's it. The sanding he did for the little nicks we had in our walls was uneven. In fact, I had to point out two spots he actually painted over! He didn't even bother to dust anything - more on this later.

He started the job by painting the WALLS of the upstairs hallway. This should have been my first clue as to how this project was going to turn out because I've always been told that ceilings should be painted first. Anyway...as soon as I saw ten feet of his "work", I noticed a problem. Not only did the paint look "patchy", but his roll marks weren't even straight up and down - almost like he was just trying to cover up the wall like a little kid might do. I asked him if he would be doing a second coat and he said, "oh, no...it's covering fine". I told him what he so far did looked patchy. After looking at it himself, he said something about "shadows sometimes playing games" and that he usually checks his work 2-3 hours later to see how it's coming along, although he did say he'll "run over it again". Hmmm.

He stopped painting for the day literally halfway through painting a wall. Another sign! You NEVER stop painting halfway through a wall. I had this sickening feeling building up in my stomach and wish I would have stopped the job right then and there.

He came back the next day while my wife was there and by the way, he didn't even bring scaffolding! She brought to his attention the patchiness of the paint job thus far. He said it takes 24 hours for paint to dry and for us to check it the next day. As the job progressed, she brought up these concerns again and that we were uncomfortable paying what was agreed upon. He then said it takes 48 hours for paint to dry. When it was brought to his attention again, he said it takes two weeks to cure. He then went out to finally get the scaffolding.

When he returned, my wife pointed out to him some debris on the walls that apparently dried in the paint. I saw it when I got home and it was the typical lint/dust that sometimes gets stuck to a roller, eventually ending up on a wall. His response was that it's a "defect in the wall" and that "there's nothing I can do about it".

His ���second coat��� was more or less a touch-up roll here and there. The ceilings and walls looked awful and my wife expressed her dissatisfaction. We ended up paying him 3/4s of what it was supposed to be. He offered to come back to apply another coat for free, but to be honest, I didn���t want it looking any worse than what it did and I knew I���d have to have hire someone else redo what he already did.

The man can���t paint. In fact, I painted practically everything else in the house and it looks better than the job he did and I don���t even do it for a living.

I have since contacted another painter who will be coming out for an estimate. I actually talked to him for around twenty minutes and one of the things he told me was that you ALWAYS must apply at least two coats of paint on any surface that has builder���s white. He said the builder���s white really soaks up the finish of the paint. He also said on a lot of the jobs he does, it usually takes ONE DAY just to properly prep all the surfaces.

Well, live and learn they say. I really wish I would have checked out actual jobs this clown did before he set foot in our house. I wrongly assumed he was a professional.