HESLER PAINTING

We were introduced to Joe while having his brother (who is fantastic) complete a carpentry project. Joe assured us that he had been a painter for 30 years and asked to quote on our painting projects. We had previously been quoted $1000 for the foyer and hallway (including paint), and his price seemed on par for labor, so we decided to hire him and added the family room as an additional project. Joe gave us a list of the supplies we needed (# gallons of paint, rollers (?!?), caulk). He seemed knowledgable and experienced. Joe was late showing up every day he worked, and stayed late - pointing out his hourly rate for more than an 8 hour day. The first day, we had a hard time seeing the progress he had made, but assumed this was part of the prep and that once he was rolling paint, it would go quickly. This was not the case. On day 4, Joe was still working on our family room, which was the only area he worked on. His work was 'ok', but there are some spots where he missed the second coat, and the cut ins on the baseboards were sloppy. At this point we confronted Joe and asked how he thought he was doing on time. He stated that he still thought he would be "darn near" close to finishing the whole project in 6 days. We knew that our foyer/hallway/powder room would take more than 2 days (based on his work in the family room), so we decided to have him stop working when he was done with the famly room. I do not know if Joe underestimated the work or flat out lied to us with his estimate, but I feel the latter is probably the case. He was off in the amount of paint we needed by several gallons, was perpetually late, and moved at a rather slow pace. Perhaps it would have been different if we had agreed on a price for the job, as opposed to paying him daily, but we feel somewhat cheated.