Rainbow Painting & Contracting LLC

Patrick Flores brought me a contract saying they were going to scrape all the popcorn-looking acoustic stuff off all the ceilings and paint the entire house. He claimed his guys were very professional, very neat,very honest, and great painters. So professional I wouldn't regret it for a second, everything will be done so nice! He's got a time tested method. He's been doing this for 16 years. He's got a schedule all planned. And it will all start July 29th, Aug 1st at the latest. He just needs to finish up the job he's doing.
I did have the foresight to make him write on the contract that work would proceed UN-interrupted once it began.
Well July 29th was pushed back to July 31st. (ok, no biggie)
The 31st was pushed back to Wednesday Aug 2nd. I started to get a bad feeling...
Wed. Aug 2nd he didn't show, so I called him. Oh... my... god, he forgot all about it!  He wants to know can he push back Aug 2nd to god-only-knows when.
Now I finally throw a fit.
So Patrick, the owner of the company, the guy who sold me the job, says, quote, "OK, we'll be there tomorrow, 9:00am, we're going to come in, tape everything up, do all the prep, and then Friday we'll come in and start scraping the ceilings and floating them out, We'll stay late if we have to".  (because all well planned jobs start on Fridays)
Day 1:
They showed up at the un-Godly hour of 11:00am. Bright and early! These guys were going to catch that early-bird worm for sure. Stupid me, I thought the construction trades start at like... 7am. Did I mention I spent 11 years in a construction office?  We always started at 7:00am.
So here they were, and there's Patrick, showing the guys, who look like something fresh out of prison,  all he wants them to do. In Spanish of course. Which I don't speak. So I quietly wait while he walks around pointing at things and sounding very authoritative, in Spanish. At one point he stop and quietly asks one of the two men, "What's your name again"? This he thinks I haven't heard. But I did, so there's the 2nd alarm going off in my head. Didn't he tell me all his guys had been with him for a long time?  Yes, he did.
I wait till he's run out of wind and quietly ask him, off to the side, if he knows these guys. I'm giving him a chance to warn me that no, these guys are new. But no, of course he knows them!   Ok mental note to self and I let it go. But before he leaves I ask him to tell his guys that if they need to smoke to, please, do it outside, not in the house. "OH, that's not a problem, my guys' don't smoke or drink!" (they're all good Christians, remember) Then he leaves. Leaving me with two very large, grown men, with whom I can't communicate. And one REALLY SERIOUSLY looks like a spanking fresh ex-con.
I sit down at my computer to work.
First thing I notice is one of the two guys spends most of his time out in the front yard smoking. I notice because my desk is right beside the front window. I don't care, I really don't, I'm not paying the guy, Patrick is. But I do care about butts being left all over my yard or out on the sidewalk for my neighbors to enjoy. So I call Patrick's cell phone. He's too busy to answer, so I leave a message saying, "Please tell your "non-smoking" crew not to leave their cigarette butts all over the yard, because I'm watching him grind butts into front lawn".
1:00 rolls around and the one guy, who's been working while the other smoked, sticks his head into my office and somehow, through gestures and bad English, manages to tell me they're leaving. I ask, "What, for lunch?? You eat??" (making gestures) no no, LEAVING. I glance at the clock and am like "Oh no you don't! Hold up, right there, Patrick said you're suppose to prep the place for scraping tomorrow." The guy sheepishly says he'll go talk to other guy, who, I notice, is already sitting behind the wheel.
So I speed-dial Patrick. But before I can even get Patrick on the phone, the two non-smoking, non-drinking Christians are on the road, warm beers in hand. Adios Amigos...   TWO hours!
Does this place look ready to scrape ceilings? That's Italian leather sitting in that archway.
Much arguing with Patrick ensues. He keeps trying to assure me that it was all according to plan, and tomorrow they will come in and start scraping. I'm not buying it, I've got this guys number now. I've seen this before, this is going to be 3 weeks of h***.
Day 2:
I've had the foresight to put a bucket of sand by the front walk for cigarettes.
They arrived at the crack of 11:00, again. Two young guys today. Patrick played the boss man for about 15 minutes again, telling them to do all the things that DIDN'T get done yesterday, but this time warning me that the boys had to stop at 3:00 today. So he's planned a full 4-hour day.
Oh thank god for the young, these boys actually worked  Oh dear... it's not holding. But wait, They fix it.
As he's leaving he's telling me it's all going to be fine once he gets rolling. He just needs time to set things up.
Translation: "We still haven't finished that other job, plus I've started a new job, so I don't have the manpower to scrape your ceilings and I don't know when I will."
We signed the contract on the 14th of July, and it was Aug. 4th...   21 days isn't enough time to prepare. Due to 16 years
of experience and having a GREAT plan.
Oh spare me.... Why didn't he just tell me there was no way he could start it for at least a month? My guess: Because he is seriously clueless as to when jobs will be over. He has no clue how to calculate that, especially with guys that decide to leave after 2 hours.
An hour after they left. . .   All the taping is falling down.
Almost forgot, I found out at the end of the day as the boys waited for over an hour for Patrick to come get them, that Patrick had never told them to scrape, only tape.
Day 3, Saturday:
I woke up to find that all of the taping that went on yesterday began to come loose and as of this morning it looked like I had very kinky garland strung all over my house.  By noon most of the garland and plastic was on the floor.
RAINBOW PAINTING & CONTRACTING doesn't work on Saturdays, because they're good Christians. I had to live w/ that mess all weekend, slipping and sliding around on the plastic.  At the time I was dealing with multiple herniated disks in my lower back, which Mr. Flores knew about.  I could barely walk.
Monday I fired him.  I never did get my $2,000.00 back, and I did report him to the BBB.
The painters that came in a day later, "Mary Jane's House Painting & Remodeling", were done in 10 days later, beautiful job, no taping required.  I've reviewed them also.
How can I remember all this 7 years later? Because I wrote the BBB, and blogged about it.  See my first Angie's review (with photos) Same exact guy, different location.  Angie didn't have them linked, so I am.
http://my.angieslist.com/AngiesList/MyAngie/MyAccount/ViewReports.aspx?s5TqPIbZArT4nMQS%2fERUUbqIuSYernBDdwj8o%2b89Huk%3d
FINAL WORD: Rainbow Painting already had 1 complaint filed against them with the Better Business Bureau. I should have looked. So...
Lesson #1: ALWAYS check out your contractor with the BBB before hiring.   
Lesson #2: Down-payment required?   NEVER EVER PAY UP FRONT!

They showed up later than scheduled and Patrick went around telling them what to do in Spanish.  Two of the men seemed to be pretty good, but the other three looked like they were just released from prison.  He said they were new helpers.  This upset me because Patrick had discussed all of his years of painting experience and he didn't even paint at all. The scary ones painted the wrong color on one of the walls (all the walls in the room were supposed to look the same) so they had to correct that.  I later noticed that they spilled paint on the carpet and all over the trim, but luckily my bed hides it for now.  They dumped the paint out on the grass and new bushes and there was a path of drips of paint (including on the brick porch) to the outside water hose.  Also, they did not paint two coats as promised so we could see the old color showing through in many areas.  He had a guy touch it up, but with the lighter color paint in the kitchen covering older dark paint, it did need two coats so it looks bad. They took a day longer than promised since they showed up late every day.

The only reason I went with Patrick is because the interior designer who helped me select the paint colors highly recommended him.  When I told him I wasn't happy with the job, he told me it was because the designer chose bad colors!  I tried to call her to tell her not to recommend him anymore, but she was out-of-town. 

I would never, ever use him again.  Worse paint job we've ever had.

Mike didn?t show as scheduled on Wednesday. I called Patrick and he said that he forgot about our appointment. Patrick scheduled Mike and another worker to come to the house on Friday to complete the work from Monday. He called me that morning to tell me that he couldn?t get in touch with the men. He rescheduled for the following Monday, July 5. Patrick was suppose to send over two men to complete the job that Mike had started the Monday before. I called to ask about the arrival time for the men. He said he didn?t even realize that they weren?t at my house. He told me that he would call me right back. When he did call back he told me that Mike, his best guy, had quit and he had to fire the other guy. I asked him what would happen now. He responded that I didn?t seem to care that he was having a bad day because he had just lost his best guy. I turned the call over to my husband because Patrick continued to insist that I was being unreasonable. Later that day, Patrick called my husband to tell him that he was trying out a new guy. He was sending this new guy to start another job to see his quality of work. He wanted to send the new guy to complete the list, excluding the trim work. Patrick told my husband that he would be in touch in a couple of days. He asked my husband to give him another 30 days for the paint to ?cure?. He wanted us to work with him. I guess the new guy didn?t work out because we never heard from Patrick again. Thursday, July 8- I called Glidden to ask them about the paint that was used on the trim since it was their brand. They sent over two men to look over the work. Both men agreed that the wrong paint was applied. They determined that latex was used over oil with no primer. They said that although latex can be placed over oil based paint, a number of steps, which were skipped, must be taken in order for the paint to stick. I asked if the paint needed more time to ?cure? and they both agreed that the paint would continue to peel 10 years from now because the wrong paint and method was used. No more than 30 days is needed for any of their paints. Tuesday, August 30- I called Patrick and asked him about his plan to fix the paint problem in my house. He said that he was working on another job and at the time he didn?t know when he would be finished. He asked that I call him back in two weeks and he would then let me know what he planned to do. Two weeks later I called Patrick. I asked him about his plan to fix the trim problem. He said that I should call him back on Friday because he wanted to send his best guy Don to work on our house the following week but at time he didn?t have his appointment book with him. I told him that I was tired of getting the run around and having to call him instead. I asked him why other jobs couldn?t be bumped to complete a job that has been pending completion for over 3 months. He said that he had a contract with those people and wouldn?t break it. H

Rainbow Painting already had 1 complaint filed against them with the Better Business Bureau. I should have looked. So lesson #1: ALWAYS check out your contractor with the BBB before hiring. Lesson #2: Required $2,000.00 down-payment for supplies. I did have the foresight to make him write on the contract that work would proceed UN-interrupted once it began. Well July 29th was pushed back to July 31st. (ok, no biggie) The 31st was pushed back to Wednesday Aug 2nd. I started to get a bad feeling... Wed. Aug 2nd he didn't show, so I called him. Oh... my... god, he forgot all about it! He wants to know can he push back Aug 2nd to god-only-knows when. Now I finally throw a hissy fit. So Patrick, the owner of the company, the guy who sold me the job, says, quote, "OK, we'll be there tomorrow, 9:00am, we're going to come in, tape everything up, do all the prep, and then Friday we'll come in and start scraping the ceilings and floating them out, We'll stay late if we have to". (because all well planned jobs start on Fridays) Day 1: They showed up at the un-godly hour of 11:00am. Bright and early! These guys were going to catch that early-bird worm for sure. Stupid me, I thought the construction trades start at like... 7am. Did I mention I spent 11 years in a construction office? So here they were, and there's Patrick, showing the guys all he wants them to do. In Spanish of course. Which I don't speak. So I quietly wait while he walks around pointing at things and sounding very authorative, in Spanish. At one point he stop and quietly asks one of the two men, "What's your name again"? This he thinks I haven't heard. But I did, so there's the 2nd alarm going off in my head. Didn't he tell me all his guys had been with him for a long time? Yes, he did. I wait till he's run out of wind and quietly ask him, off to the side, if he knows these guys. I'm giving him a chance to warn me that no, these guys are new. But no, of course he knows them! Ok Ok, I can give you all the rope you want to hang yourself with, so I let it go. But before he leaves I ask him to tell his guys that if they need to smoke to, please, do it outside, not in the house. "OH, that's not a problem, my guys' don't smoke or drink!" (they're all good Christians, remember) Then he leaves. Leaving me with two very large, grown men, with whom I can't communicate. And one looks like he could have just gotten out of prison. I sit down at my computer to work. First thing I notice is one of the two guys spends most of his time out in the front yard smoking. I notice because my desk is right beside the front window. I don't care, I really don't, I'm not paying the guy, Patrick is. But I do care about butts being left all over my yard or out on the sidewalk for my neighbors to enjoy. So I call Patrick's cell phone. He's too busy to answer, so I leave a message saying, "Please tell your non-smoking crew not to leave their butts all over the yard, because I'm watching him grind butts into my south Texas dry-as-dust-in-the-desert front lawn". 1:00 rolls around and the one guy, who's been working while the other smoked, sticks his head into my office and somehow, through gestures and bad English, manages to tell me they're leaving. I ask, "What, for lunch?? You eat??" (making gestures) no no, LEAVING. I glance at the clock and am like "Oh no you don't! Hold up, right there, Patrick said you're suppose to prep the place for scraping tomorrow." The guy sheepishly says he'll go talk to other guy, who, I notice, is already sitting behind the wheel. So I'm frantically dialing Patrick as fast as I can, which is pretty fast because I've got him programmed into all my phones. But before I can even get Patrick on the phone, the two non-smoking, non-drinking Christians are on the road, warm beers in hand. Adios Amigos... TWO hours! Does this place look ready to scrape ceilings? That's Italian leather sitting in that archway. Much arguing with Patrick ensues. He keeps trying to assure me that it was all according to plan, and tomorrow they will come in and start scraping. I'm not buying it, I've got this guys number now. I've seen this before, this is going to be 3 weeks of h***. Day 2: I've had the foresight to put a bucket of sand by the front walk for cigarettes. They arrived at the crack of 11:00, again. Two young guys today. Patrick played the boss man for about 15 minutes again, telling them to do all the things that DIDN'T get done yesterday, but this time warning me that the boys had to stop at 3:00 today. So, a full 4-hour day. great... Oh thank god for the young, these boys actually worked Oh dear... it's not holding. But wait, They fix it. As he's leaving he's telling me it's all going to be fine once he gets rolling. He just needs time to set things up. Translation: "We still haven't finished that other job, plus I've started a new job, so I don't have the manpower to scrape your ceilings and I don't know when I will." We signed the contract on the 14th of July, and it was Aug. 4th... Aha... I see... 21 days isn't enough time to prepare. Due to 16 years of experience and having a GREAT plan. Oh spare me.... Why didn't he just tell me there was no way he could start it for at least a month? My guess: Because he is seriously clueless as to when jobs will be over. He has no clue how to calculate that, especially with guys that decide to leave after 2 hours. An hour after they left, uh oh... spoke too soon. All the taping is falling down. There's more to this story, like I found out at the end of the day as the boys waited for over an hour for Patrick to come get them, that Patrick had never told them to scrape, only tape. It just gets stickier and stickier.... Day 3: I woke upto find that all of the taping that went on yesterday began to come loose and as of this morning it looked like I had very kinky garland strung all over my house. By most of the garland was on the floor. Of course RAINBOW PAINTING & CONTRACTING doesn't work on Saturdays, because they're good Christians. Monday I fired him. I never did get my $2,000.00 back, and I did report him to the BBB. The painters that came in a day later, Mary Jane's House Painting & Remodeling, were done in 10 days, beautiful job, no taping required.