Help! I'm wondering how people think we should deal with the following situation ... we just don't know what we should do!
We're building a new house (3 floors, about 4500 sq.ft). We have a general contractor, but we ended up selecting our own interior painter ($8000 quoted) because he was about a thousand $$ less - our GC was fine with it but did warn us we'd have to deal with the painter.
We've had nothing but problems since he started the job. To start, he primed the house but told us he watered down the primer because he ran out of primer and was catching a plane the next day and wanted to finish priming. He left behind his two workers - young guys both who have only been with the painter 6 months and another fellow who we find out later he subbed the painting of the top floor out to do the actual painting. (The painter told us he had a crew of 5.)
The paint job looked pretty bad - the texture was uneven - some areas are super smooth and others are textured - and they didn't do any patching/puttying on the walls, or any other prep like sanding the walls - if you rubbed the walls, you'd get drywall dust even after the walls had been painted. The basement with the primer was extremely thin and sections of walls were missed - because they were priming at night with limited light. My husband ended up adding another coat of primer himself.
When the painter came back, he blamed the drywall/sander/mudder guys. For the record, our builder has used the same drywall guys before and he has won builder awards for other houses he's done with them. The drywall guys came back and fixed up the walls (as a favour to the builder & it took him less than 30 minutes) but said the painters are just being lazy and it's a bad paint job. The painter did add extra coat of paint after the walls had been re-prepped. He even admitted the painter he subbed the work out do didn't do a very good job of prepping the walls - the subbed out painter told the main painter "the home owner didn't want him to fix the walls before painting" - which was a blatant lie, why would we say that, even the painted doubted his subtrade. He ran out of paint (because he didn't buy enough), he wanted us to pay for all of the new paint needed but we compromised and agreed to pay for half of the cost.
They are very careless - when they leaned ladders against the painted walls, they don't cover the ladder legs and ended up scratching the walls again (which are now going unfixed because they won't paint the walls anymore); we had tiles in a storage area & when they sprayed the ceiling there, they didn't cover up the tile and ended up getting paint over the tiles; they go over to the neighbor's to get big buckets of water into the house and have spilled water over our subfloors many times, plus our neighbor has repeatedly told them not to use his water without asking but they still do it; they cleaned their rollers on the front porch and ended up splattering paint over our exterior already painted HardiPlank and the stone work - the list goes on.
The painting of the walls was supposed to take a week (they started Dec. 18th) - but all his guys & himself all disappeared over the holidays and we didn't see them until Jan. 4th. He's complaining saying he's been on this job for 5 weeks - he dismisses the fact that he & his crew disappeared for 3 weeks over the holidays and it's because of his subpar work that he's had to redo the walls.
The latest is that the arrangement was to be that he'd paint the top two floors, all the doors & trim, and prime the basement which we'd paint. Now he's come back and said his quote didn't include the trim and doors for the basement. If you read the quote, it's very misleading - it reads:
- top two floors - two coats paint
- basement prime only
- window trims, baseboards, doors painted, caulk, ... etc
It does not say that the window trims/doors in the basement are excluded. If we had known that, we would have asked for clarification.
We had 2 other quotes with the same criteria (prime everything, paint top two floors, and all the trim & doors). They were fairly comparable. We would not have gone with him if the quote excluded the basement trim/ doors. We went with this guy because a friend had used them with no complaints (although it was for a renovation) and he has A+ rating with Better Business Bureau.
So now after all of going back & forth, he wants $500 to spray the basement trim & doors, plus another $250 to caulk the trim & doors, etc. After arguing with my husband, my husband offered to split the cost. But the painter won't go for it.
We're just so fed up with the guy. He's done sub-par job, keeps asking us for more $ to fix him problems, and now he wants even more $.
The finishing guy just wants his trim painted and has said he doesn't want to separate the trim/doors into separate piles for the top two floors vs. basement. We just want the painter to finish and get out, but at the same time can't believe he has the nerve to ask for more $ for a sub-par job and all the grief he has caused.
First, thanks for letting me vent. Now - what would you do? Any suggestions?
chispa
jmagill_zn4
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