PAINTING PROS

During the first week of the project, I really got a feel for how "Painting Pros" was a misnomer. It should be "Painting Part-timers", or perhaps "Painting Students". Since my wife and I had to wait for them to arrive in the morning to start work, we took turns going in to work late so that we could let them in. They never did show up on time, and on one occasion showed up over 2 hours late. Apparently, one of the painters took the van home and parked illegally at his apartment complex. He awoke (late) to find that the truck had been towed and we did not receive a call until he was already 2 hours late. My wife lost pay from having to take that time off of work. On more than one occasion, I came home during my lunch hour to find the entire house wide open and empty. The painter who was to be handling the job was taking classes at the local university, and would leave, go to class, and come back, leaving the house unlocked the whole time. I won't fault someone for furthering their education, but since he was constantly late, and leaving in the middle of the day, he would have to stay until after dark to get the daily tasks finished. On one evening, we had evening plans at 8:30pm and he was still cleaning up at 8pm! The two guys assigned to our contract at first were the college student and his assistant, a teenager who had been left behind at our house at least once while the painter was at class. At the beginning of the second week, after contacting the manager with our complaints, two other painters were pulled from another job. These guys knew what they were doing, but were obviously overloaded. They did a rush job to finish the rest of the house. In one room, you can clearly see entire sections of wall where the paint is thinner, surrounded by thick paint in the corners. Also they left a mess behind and scuff marks on the tile floor. We did discuss it with the manager. He was apologetic, but expressed that there was nothing he could do.

We wanted the painting project to be unique, so we tried to match a few colors with some belongings we had, particularly a comforter with some green in it. Well, that room is brighter than we expected, but that's ok, it's the color we chose for it. They had two guys here for two days, 8-5. They really worked well together, they didn't waste any time, and they did a great job. They even touched up some places that weren't quite right, and that was great.