JUSTPAINTING.NET

We hired Brian to paint our new condo prior to moving in. The quote he came back with was less than other painters, but based on his website and reviews we went ahead and hired him. When he told me he was done I entered the condo to take a look. Initially things looked good, but as I started examining the walls I realized that the work he had done was ridiculously sloppy. We have gray walls and white trim throughout the condo. The white trim, which didn't need painting, had gray wall paint all over. It looked like he had just taken his paintbrush and run it right along the trim without any attempt at all to make a clean line and keep gray paint off white surfaces. I pointed this out to him and he became defensive, telling me things like "the existing wall paint was rough and it made painting difficult to paint a straight line." When I asked him why he hadn't used tape he told me "pro painters don't tape," yet he had used tape on the baseboards which didn't have these issues. He told me he would make it right and he brought out some paint remover and started scrubbing the sides of the trim, essentially just making things look worse. When I told him this was unacceptable he told me he would repaint the sides of the trim. I told him that sounded like a good plan and that we would buy trim paint and schedule another day. He then told me he would use the white ceiling paint to touch up the trims. I responded that it would be a different texture and he said "nobody will ever notice." At this point it was late and he seemed increasingly irritated so I told him I trusted his professional opinion and left for a while while he fixed the mess. When I came back he told me he was done and I went through and had to point out every single place he missed, which was A LOT. Then I noticed that there were entire spots on the ceiling that had not been painted and asked him to fix those as well. We went through many rounds of this before I asked him to please just examine his own work and fix it. When all this was done I was so exhausted by the situation I paid him and he left. The next day when I came back to the condo I started to get a good look at the place in the daylight and I was just completely blown away by how sloppy things were: 1. You could see ceiling paint all over the trims 2. There were still tons of trim that still had gray streaks 3. There was paint all over the floors, cabinets, and oven hood 4. The corner where the ceiling meets the wall was a wavy mess in many places 5. There are entire places in corners and near outlets that were not painted at all 6. All of our outlet covers have paint all over them I sent him two emails with photos and a detailed outline of all of these problems and asked for a refund so that I can pay someone to come back and fix the issues. He simply will not respond to my emails. For all of this we paid $180 per hour. I just can't believe how badly we got conned here and that he now will not even respond to factual details backed up by so many photos. Brian's website says things like: 1. "Edges are painted in perfectly straight" 2. "...Perfectly painted room with no mess..." 3. "Brian did the best job painting everything perfectly" 100% not true. In fact exactly the opposite.

I contacted Brian by email through his website on a Saturday. He promptly responded. I told him what I needed to have done and inquired about his availability. He responded that he was available on Monday and Thursday of the following week. I asked him to come Monday morning. He arrived Monday morning, I had already procured paint for him to work with. Like most painters, he has preferred brands of paint to work with. I have no problem with this as if his job is easier, so goes my life. I changed the scope of work upon his arrival which presented no problems. He was very quick, cleaned up after himself, and did a very nice job painting over gloss paint, which presents problems of its own. I knew how much the project was going to cost because he had the prices listed on his website for rooms of certain sizes. I liked having a flat rate to work from. He honored those prices.