Nelson Moreno Painting

Nelson Moreno was selected as the Contractor because he said that he could meet the schedule. He was not the cheapest provider, but said he could meet the schedule and I had received positive feedback from a neighbor on work that his company had done for his wife's company. Nelson mobilized promptly and had 4-5 painter on-site immediately. My electricians had laid down paper on all the flooring and the house was empty except for some tools and lawn chairs...so his prep was minimal to begin. Unfortunately, even with the minimal prep I started to see issues. I left town the first few days that they started so that I could pack at my old house. When I returned, I found that the small amount of tools, chairs and wall treatments were thrown unceremoniously in my back yard. Furthermore, all the trash (water bottles, food wrappers, etc) they had created over the weekend was on my lawn. Even more disturbing, one of my doors had been propped open at the side of my house after they left for the evening. I called Nelson and he apoligized for the mess but said his crew didn't prop the door open. He blamed the electricians. Over the next week, I continued to see trash problems and asked that they didn't clean their rags and other trash in my front yard. Beyond the cleanliness of their work, they patches that they completed were good. The painting of the walls did not have any streaks and was uniform. As my move in day approached, they had considerable work left to complete. As I did a walk-through with Nelson, I noticed that while the patches they completed were good, they left large gaps where the switch plates went. I asked him to make the fixes because the entire house had gaps where the plaster didn't meet up with the electrical switch plates. Nelson said that was the electricians fault because they made the holes too large. I reminded him that he was contracted to fix the electricians holes. He complied with this request, but it caused him to go past the due date. He said that he would have to do the re-work after I moved in. This concerned me because I couldn't place any of my furniture near the walls while he worked. He said that his workers were used to this and it wouldn't be a problem. I relented but had my concerns. Especially because the work was so far from being done (i.e. none of the baseboards were done and the house was coated in dust.) However, Nelson was confident that he could meet the revised schedule. Unfortunately, this just wasn't true. In the end, he did do the patches. But there were numerous places where his crew didn't paint the baseboards or missed areas. He didn't finish painting the inside of some cabinets, didn't return window fixtures back to their orginal position, didn't rehand doors and quite frankly his cleanup was just plain awful. His crew picked up the paper that was inside the house and threw it in my back patio. Plaster dust went all over. It made me furious because an empty trash can was a mere foot away from where they threw the paper. I moved into a house that was rudimentary clean and had many spot repairs remained along with doors not reinstalled, molding no painted, wall treatments not re-installed. Nelson sent a painter back to make the repairs and to perform the other clean-up items. However, it was a half-hearted attempt. The painter would come for and hour or two at most and was almost always late. In the end my husband, just paid them to get them to basically leave since they were holding up other work in the house. We just couldn't wait for their half hearted attempts to perform the follow-up in one to two hour increments. As an example, they would say they would be there at noon and then arrive at 4 pm and do a little work before leaving at 6 pm. My husband just wanted them out. I, myself, would have made them come back until the moon turned blue. But that's me...and to get some peace at the house and to move forward...we just paid them to leave. That's our fault. However, I would never use them again. To be fair, the work they did do was okay, but I wouldn't want to deal with their clean-up issues again. On a final note: our garbage disposal was somehow broken during this process. When we had it fixed, we had tons of paint crap in it and several five inch nails. I'm not sure how they could have been accidental dropped in the disposal...but they were.