Gene Gray

Gene Gray was recommended by the local Sherwin Williams store. He stopped by, looked at the deck, was friendly, and provided a thorough estimate and appeared to know the best way to strip and restain our peeling deck. He assured us it would be a two- to four-day job and that he would clean up when the job was done. He was late on the day he was to have started, and he did not return repeated phone calls. Finally, he did appear. He put his capable assistant to work using a chemical stripper and then a power washer to strip the old paint off the deck. It wasn't Gene's fault that the paint refused to come off without a fight. What should have been a quick job was turning into a week-long headache for him. It wasn't his fault, either, that his two power-washers suddenly quit working, leaving him backed-up with several customers. The headache for us was that Gene did not return phone calls. We did not know whether he would show up or not, so we could not plan our day ahead of time. When he did show up, he did excellent work, though he was frustrated by the unusual problem with the paint on our deck, and we heard him swearing in the yard about it. He told us he was losing money on the job but called it "the cost of doing business." We quietly planned to pay him extra once the job was done. Gene's power washer splintered a board on the deck deeply and widely, so he promised to replace the board, removing all but two of the nails and then leaving to get his router so that he could cut out the edge of a new board and install and stain it. He also promised to finish painting the trim and powerwash the side of the house, which was covered with dirt and blue paint chips. We paid him $800 (the amount of his estimate -- though foolishly we never signed a contract, just looked at the estimate). Also foolishly, we paid him before he had replaced the splintered board, finished the trim painting, and cleaned up. For his extra hours, we paid him $200 more as a gesture of goodwill. We also were planning to hire him to re-floor our backyard shed. a job worth $500-700 for him. But we never saw him again. The job is unfinished, Mr. Gray has lost potentially loyal repeat customers, and we're sorry we had to write this complaint. We even called to let him know that if he chose not to finish the job, we'd have to write a complaint here on Angie's List as well as speak to the people at Sherwin Williams, though they are not responsible for the work others do. Finally, it appears that he snookered us, because the job isn't done as he promised, and now we have to spend the time to complete it when he had, in fact, assured us it would be done quickly and thoroughly, from cleaning, repairing and staining to cleaning up.