Kelley's Home Decorating

First I need to say that this guy and his wife (who comes to the jobsite with him almost every day) seem to be very nice and sweet people and although our overall experience was bad, we know other homeowners who have used them to be satisfied.

Chris seems to be a pretty good painter and that is what he had done for others that recommended him to us. The problem is that he told us up front that he could do carpentry and trim work including sheet rock so we hired him to do the above work.

First off, he started working on all the different parts of the quote and never completed any of it in the end. His carpentry skills are weak at best and he took some terrible short-cuts like using boards that he had cut too short and filled in large gaps with caulking, using mismatched board sizes on our window trim and silver colored galvanized screws to hang our bronze colored storm windows.

Our initial agreement with him was payment on completion of the job, with reimbursement for materials as needed with the receipts. After nearly completing the steps on our deck he asked for a $200 draw, which my wife happily gave since he had been working for several days by this time (with nothing completed), along with several hundred dollars in material costs reimbursed.

A couple of days later his wife asked me about another draw, when I asked how much she said "is $1000 okay?", I responded by agreeing to give them $500 and did.

The next day I was looking over the work he had done on my bay window trim and noticed 2 boards that were cut short, one almost and inch and the other about 1/2 inch, both gaps filled with caulking. And I noticed that he had been using a concrete or framing hammer that left deep knurl marks at every nail head spot on my trim plus he had used large framing nails instead of finishing nails on my bay window trim, it looked terrible and will have to be redone!

Here's what happended next; I approached him in good faith and asked him to look at these two things, he admitted that he had cut the boards too short and said he would replace them. I then went inside my garage and found my hammer (smooth faced) and handed it to him and asked that he not use the framing hammer on my house again, he responded okay and I left for work. One hour later my wife called me very upset and told me that he called her and said I was "too picky and could not be satisfied" and that he would not be returning to complete our job.

My sense is that I made a mistake by giving the $500 draw the day before and that had I been watching his work closer from the beginning, I would have realized that he was no carpenter.

Just to top off the experience, the Tuesday after he rolled up and quit, my wife got a flat tire on her car (3 week old expensive tires) and it was discoved that a nail was in the edge of the tread. Cost me $$$, our housekeeper was tasked with sweeping every inch of the driveway the following day where she found 5 more nails on the driveway in the area where the guy had been working!

We have since found a new guy and he will be redoing and finishing all of the original work over the next week and we hope he is better and our agreement is for NO DRAWS.

Chris Kelley is a nice guy, but I think he should stick to painting only. I would not however, pay him any money until the job is inspected and completed.