Felipe Vargas

I hired Felipe for some painting and to replace a deck summer of 2018. He quite a fair price for the labor and I would pay for any materials. Most of the work that was finished is good, but there are a few reasons I must recommend against hiring Felipe. First and foremost is lack of project management and responsiveness. The deck project has taken a very long time and a year later it's not yet complete. Felipe will promise something to be done on a given date and majority of the time nobody shows up because "they forgot", "hadn't gotten the material", "realized it's a holiday" etc. We made the mistake of paying Felipe the final due on the deck in January since he just had painting left to do and promised to knock it out as soon as the weather dried up. It's now June and still not done. Felipe promised to get it done on a given Saturday, but they forgot. Then the next Thursday. Nothing. Then the Thursdays after. Crickets. He doesn't respond to text. Doesn't respond to calls. The other issues we faced was that despite agreeing on an overall labor price, Felipe wanted to increase that price during the project for items that were included in the original scoping. It may be that these items weren't sufficiently specified at the outset (eg type of railing) when quoting the price and that we truly had different pictures of this in mind. But even so i would expect him as the professional to ask the questions necessary to determine a fixed price that he can stick to for the agreed upon work (additional work obviously have to be discussed separately). Or alternatively, suggest an hourly pay as you go model without a large fixed price portion. Finally, one of the walls painted last summer is peeling. Felipe looked at it and concluded that it likely was still wet from pressure wash when painted, and that they should redo it. However given the lack of responsiveness I have no reason to think that it will happen unless forced (will update if this changes).

Felipe is a professional. He is customer driven. It was all about what I wanted to have done. I purchased the pavers at Home Depot, and he expertly installed them. Easily, the cost (including pavers) was less than 25% of what a "professional" company quoted me. We're planning on doing a flagstone project, and I will not hesitate to use him again!!