Russell Long & Assoc

This is our opinion. Perhaps we just ended up having our job done at the wrong time in the universe or something. Mr. Long doesn't seem to do any of the painting himself but runs "crews". His bid was the highest of the three. Mr. Long himself is very likeable and came via a personal recommendation as well as being rather heavily promoted by a local community website (could be self promoted...really don't know). We have paid him in full for personal reasons and wish him well- but would lilke others to be aware of our experience in the hope that, handled differently, they will get the kind of performance we believe this company is capable of.. Perhaps the problems arose because workers were not adequately supervised and we are overall discouraged with the results- but we just have to move on, get moved in, and don't want painters underfoot (especially using oil base!). The two crews that he used DID seem to know technique, but perhaps the fellows that did the jambs and mop boards and linen closet were not careful to read color labels on the cans. The two shades we used were close in value, so double checking what the label states would be imperative! The sanding and prep was erratic. No dust containment seemed to be implemented. Even though the house was vacant, we felt that the workers left things so messy each day that it perhaps lent to the confusion. One afternoon I had to intervene when one of the painters/helpers was dumping paint leavings on the other side of our back fence onto a neighbors property! The door jambs were erroneously painted in the darker wall color and then had to be redone...unfortunately the darker pink color is bleeding through the one coat fix. Unfortunately, oil paint apparently takes a bit of time to cure, so some of this is more apparent as time passes. It appears that some shelves in the linen closet may have only gotten one coat. Lots of light overspray on the hardwood floors that my husband and a helper spent hours cleaning off (again a caveat that the floors were put in before the painting and the blue tape could not be left on them for any length of time. However, for the most part, the taped paper was pulled up at end of day and the same was pressed down the following day. Even IF the floors had not been installed first, overspray would be a problem as the mastic used to adhere the hardwood floors to the slab can't be used on overspray, so arguing that time spent having to mask off each day seems specious) We also opted to not complain to Mr. Long about a dent put in the hardwood floors (looked like a sander must have been dropped or something) near the kitchen cabinet area. We just asked the fellow to be careful in the future and to his credit he did not get defensive and seemed to try his best. Nonetheless, it has added to our overall feelings about the project. We are sorry this didn't work out as well as we had hoped. On the plus side, the actual APPLICATION of the paint on the intended surfaces was reasonably smooth.