We enlisted the people at College Works Painters to paint our house this year. When we signed up with them, they sold me based upon their preparation techniques and claimed thoroughness. They told me that I will not have to pay for the job until I am so happy with them that I would be willing to give them a letter of recommendation.
They have been at it for three days and they told my wife yesterday that they where finished with the job. when I arrived home from work, what I saw was a house that a 12 year old child could have painted better in less than half of the time that they spent on it. I also noticed the serious lack of preparation work all over the surface of the house.
I talked to the supervisor yesterday and she claimed to share my concerns although she was there at many times through the day and had to have seen them painting over areas of the house that clearly needed prep work done still.
She promised to have them come back in the morning to “patch things up” and that they would be finished by around noon. She must have sensed my wifes hesitation to lay into them like I did and they offered to have her sign the acceptance papers while I was at work. That made me even more upset with them and I demanded to hold off on any paper signing until I see the job and agree that it is good. Below are some pictures from the FINISHED job as of this morning.
They didn’t even sand the house before painting over these huge crators of flaked paint!
They didn’t pull the old vines down to paint as we had agreed upon
The paint was still flaking and chipped in many locations such as this!
Below was the letter that I left for them as I went to work this morning:
• The house still has many areas where it is flaking old paint. This is unacceptable. I want every area where there are flakes to be sanded down, primed, and repainted.
• The overhangs have not been painted. On one side of the house, you didn’t even bother to pull down the remnants of the old vines so that you could paint
• Many areas looks like you didn’t sand at all but just painted over the old craters left by the old paint flakes. See the last picture in the list above. This looks like crap and any good painters would have sanded that down with a power sander before priming and painting to minimize the depth differences in the paint. This looks like a 12 year old painted the house. I want these areas sanded with a power sander, smoothed, primed, and repainted.
• In areas of the house, it looks like you didn’t even paint. You can see the lines where you left off and decided not to finish.
• The border around many of the windows is still flaking and have not been painted
I am paying a lot of money to you under the promise that you have world class prep work and that I will have a great looking paint job that will last a long time. What I see instead is a horrible paint job that could have been done for a couple of six packs by a few friends. This is not professional painting.
No papers will be signed and no money will be paid until the house at least meets these basic requirements.
Was I being too hard on them? I hope that I can come back tomorrow and write a blog praising them for fixing this mess and making things right.
Melissa is discussing.
Melissa 2:01 am on June 2, 2007 Permalink
You have legitimate complaints – this is awful – Katie was telling me about this today – OMG! Don’t let them get away with such a shoddy job. You’re absolutely right. Be sure you double document everything (in case computer crashes – which I know you can fix – - – but well, hard copy never hurts down the road!
Melissa