Karl J. Elder

We were referred to Karl who had such a nice demeanor that we thought we would try him out for the basement paint job. He also gave us a very good price. His performance was so good that we asked him to finish up the other paint jobs that we had put on the back burner. Once he completed these tasks, he mentioned that he could also do some of the other jobs that we had been talking about completing over the summer. So he ended up also installing the vessel sink in the master bath and hanging the floating shelves in the office and bedroom. He went over and above the call of duty, making sure that everything was off the walls rather than painting over it. He also voluntarily asked for semigloss paint so that he could do the trim in each room so that each paint job made the room look completely fresh. The only negative (if you can call it that) is that he did not have a helper so he did all the jobs himself. However, we were fine with that because he took his time and made sure that he was satisfied with the look and then that we were satisfied. We now have him painting the exterior he did such a good job inside. As a handyman, when he is finished, he will also re-tuckpoint the sidewalk and replace the concrete sidewalk. We will only go to him whenever we have a paint job now and we will talk to him first prior to going to another contractor to see if he is capable of handling any future handyman work. Update (1 yr later): He left paint cans (almost full) around the house so we were never quite sure when he considered the work finished. About 1 week after noticing, my husband tripped over one of the full paint cans and...white paint on red rugs, in the garage, on my DOG!!!, and as a result, on my car (the exterior paint as well as the interior) which obviously has limits as to remediation. We had asked him to complete some of the handman work (the two floating shelves) as well as set up the Christmas decorations (yes, 6 months after all this began). He came and never got around to completing the floating shelf installation. This time, we gave up on getting this completed by him and instead, hired a handyman service who finished the floating shelf in 10 minutes (although first he had to do a big patch job b/c, when we looked underneath the floating shelf, there were several large holes in the drywall). We may use him again for specific interior painting work, but it will be clearly defined with a start and an end date, and unlikely to use again for anything else.