Angel's Painting

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Painting is scheduled to be done and completed on 8/11.

First let's start off with the positive.      Angel's team were hard-working and polite.    They worked 7am to 5pm every day for the 6-7 days it took to finish the job.   The painting itself looked beautiful and the carpentry work was ok.    Basically this is a painting company that probably has 1 or 2 guys that can do decent carpentry work to make them some extra money.    In the beginning Angel seemed like the nicest person you would ever meet and was very patient with our color selection.   He also gives a generous 4-year warrantly for any peeling.   I sure hope I don't have to ever call them back though, which leads me to the negatives.

The project management aspect of the work was awful.  The original signed agreement was for $8,625 - roughly $7K for painting my 2000 sq foot house with siding up two chimneys, $500 for replacing 9 downspouts and $1K+ for specified carpentry work.    Once they began, Angel was non-communicative and his team ended up doing a lot of extra work without any discussion with me.     Not only did we not have an agreement on the work or what the price would be, but they didn't even tell me what they were doing.    Angel later attributed this to something I said after we signed the original contract.    What I said was "if you come across anything else that you recommend fixing, come talk to me about it and I may be interested in getting it done because I really don't have any idea how to fix things myself."      Apparently Angel saw this as an opportunity to take advantage of me and do whatever they wanted without any conversation, including things that didn't really need fixing in my opinion.     In fact, he later showed me an invoice for materials and they purchased all of their material the morning of day 1.    Clearly that says something about their intentions of driving up price on me without involving me in the decision.

As soon as I realized what was going on (mid-day # 3), I hastily tried to have rectify it.     But Angel was seemingly avoiding me and didn't come over my house until day # 5 with the "extra work" invoice for $1,800.    That extra invoice had duplicate charges and other dishonest practicies.   When I started asking questions he became very hostile and tried to bully me, yelling at me in my own backyard that I was out to screw him.    He was a totally different person from the overly nice guy I first met - crazy stuff!   When they didn't replace a piece of siding that was specified to be replaced in our original written contract, he harshly said "fine" and proceeded to tear off that piece of siding in front of me with his bare hands like a madman.   He paced around muttering to himself when I challenged the quality in another area (which was clearly bad, and yes they did resolve).    All of this during our very first in-person meeting since the project began!

I ended up agreeing to pay roughly half of the extra work (~ $900) which I thought was more than fair since the work was unauthorized.   Angel didn't see things that way and continued to escalate his anger at every turn no matter how obvious an issue.    For example, one down spout flowed straight down, with no elbow or extension flowing away from the house and he says "that costs extra".    What?    Is this guy serious?    (again, this did get fixed, but not without an extremely uncomfortable interaction).

As for the quality, like I said it was good but not perfect.    New deck floor boards weren't perfectly lined up, in one case leaving 3/4 inch gap on one side and 1/8 inch gap on the other side.  A couple new downspouts that flow down the first level roof weren't extended as far as they should be and caused a small leak in my house the first heavy rain storm after the job (which I fixed myself because I don't want to deal with him).    There were many damaged boards on one side of my house that made their paint job very blotchy.    Apparently that was pre-existing and not their fault, but I was annoyed they did all this unnecessary extra work yet didn't approach me about this important issue until the job was complete.    Poor project management.
    
In summary, I wouldn't do business with them again even though his workers were courtious and competent.    If you are considering them, keep it simple, just painting and stick to the contract.  I don't know if it's their common practice to go over-budget by 20% without any conversation and then try scare tactics and guilt-trips to get you to pay their high prices in full.    If you look at my other reviews, you will find I'm fairly reasonable.    I just don't like being manipulated and being taken advantage of, and I was clearly being taken for a ride. 

Would come every storm but expenseive

Overall, we had a great experience with Angel's Painting. Angel came to see the space, and gave us a very clear breakdown of the different pieces of the quote (we had multiple items, and wanted to see a breakdown so we could pick and choose what to hire them for to stay in our budget). He was easy to communicate with by email, but during the job left me to the foreman, which turned out okay enough anyway. He was quick getting here for the quote, and quick getting us on the schedule. The day before we were due to have them, he called to ask if we could delay one more day, and I agreed.
The painting crew was great. They were all very friendly, polite, and did not stop for a full seven hours except for a lunch, which was not even a half hour. We did have a misunderstanding about paint color, which I didn't notice until they were almost done with the first day. They remedied the problem without any drama, which I appreciated greatly, having had bad experiences in the past.
The best part about Angel's, though, was the actual painting. They did a really nice job, including working on a door that was half-unpainted and half-painted. They did a great job evening it out. The crew was neat, quiet, and very respectful of my house. They were very easy to have around, and I would hire them again.

They were the lowest, most competitive bid. They did pretty good work.

Very efficient, excellent work, friendly and accommodating crew

Everything went well.  The company was very responsive.  They were also professional and showed up on time.  There was one small problem but the company came back out and fixed it for free.

Overall we were happy with the work except the issues above.

Overall the projrct went very well, They provided a written estimsate of work to be performed and did the work on-time. There was a lag in responsiveness to our original request for service. I think they are very busy, so, allow time for exchange of information up front. Also, e-mail communication was returned more promptly than phone calls.

Everything was great. They were able to do the job when I wanted them to. Their crew size was about 3 to 6 people. It took 5 days to do the job. They cleaned up very well. I had no problems at all.

We were extremely pleased with all of the painting services -- Angel's team worked hard and quickly, were meticulous in preparing the walls and painting (the trim work was excellent). They were patient when we evaluated paint colors as they went up on the walls (one wall color and one trim color were too dark and we lightened them before letting Angel's team finish the job). They were also very careful to protect our furniture/rugs and cleaned up carefully. They did not do as well on the wallpapering job -- we used some hand printed paper that was somewhat difficult to work with. The seams looked sloppy and we had them redo sections (it still doesn't look entirely right). In light of this, I would not hire them to hang paper again, but would happily have them back to paint.

Angel's men arrived on time each day as promised. This was important as both my wife and I after letting them into our house had to leave to go to work. They were professional and courteous and always made sure to clean up when they finished for the day. Some of the dining room furniture was too heavy for my wife and I to move so Angel's men also moved some of our dining room furniture out of the room so they could have access to all the walls. They also agreed to help move it back and volunteered to help rehang a large mirror that was on the wall. I would certainly recommend them.

Fantastic. I needed the job done in less than a week as we were having a party of our house. I contacted Angel on Thursday, met with him on Friday, gave me an estimate on Monday, and I hired them on Tuesday. When stressing that the job had to be done by Saturday and the fact that rain was expected, he had 4 painters at my house within the hour. They were all friendly and professional, and got the job done in a day. Very impressive responsiveness. They even came back to do something extra on Saturday!