Right, but for that amount- let’s face it. That’s what I’m wondering. Is this an exorbitant amount to be paying for built ins where the painter doesn’t ensure they are pristine prior to painting?? Here’s what the estimate says (attaching a photo). And in-person discussion stressed the importance of the prep for the built ins hence the semi gloss paint choice. I did not take issue with the semi gloss choice because he went to great lengths to tell us that it would be more expensive to prep for the semi gloss and we said that’s ok.

Sadly there is nothing on the quote about filling nail holes etc. I think you got what you paid for. It’s crappy this happened but my experience with some trades people is they don’t care.

Don't feel like you are crazy. Every time I have had a painter paint cabinets/woodwork they have filled the holes and they never put that part in writing.

By the way, what color is that it looks great?!

How old is this house and how old are the built ins?

How banged up were they and what was the paint job like under this one?

How many days did it take him to do prep and how many days for paint?

George- at the very least I figured he would say something to us before beginning the work along the lines of, “I won’t be filling these holes, would you like to do it before I paint?”
The color is Water’s Edge by Benjamin Moore. It’s so pretty and I’m very happy with the end result. Not so happy with the many obvious gaps and holes that stick out like a sore thumb 😟

How long ago were the "built ins" built in??? Looks like the original builder didn't do his job to begin with. Filling in all those holes and dings would have taken hours.

Palimpsest- house built in 1995. My partner and I pretty much made built ins from custom bookcases that already existed in the home. we added the material at the top to reach the ceiling and all of the moulding. We had worked on this for so long that we decided to hire out for the rest of the job. We knew we wanted semi-gloss and we knew we were not up to the task of filling all of the holes and gaps (We did most of the prep work, but some left to be done.) Hence, hiring a painter who we expressed this to and whom we believed would finish the job based on our discussion AND his price. They started prepping Monday and Tuesday (total of about 8 hours I’d guess) and they’ve been painting 3 days now (first day they primed and last 2 days they painted. They worked about 4.5 hours each day I’d guess.

Angel- the painter knew that to start off. He knew the built ins needed much prep and said the price he quoted us would reflect that.

Just a question. Did you get a couple of other quotes for the job? Something to compare prices?

​That looks like a $400 paint my basement before I list quality job, not a $2,400 single room job for an owner. I don't see caulking listed on his task list and pieces which might be subject to movement should be caulked. Nail holes and dings should be filled for a good job but may not be on a repaint of existing trim in poor condition. The problem here is more of the work not matching up to the expected quality as described by the painter and expected for the agreed price.  Part of being a pro is accepting that you may have underbid (or over promised) a job but you still owe the customer a result commensurate with the promises made. A good pro would have talked to you about potential issues before giving the quote to allow enough time in the bid to do the necessary level of prep for the exected finish quality. My partner tells homeowners that the cost could range from $500 to $5,000 and he doesn't do $500 jobs and they don't want to pay $5,000 so let's talk about where you fit in that range.

The homeowner does have some responsibility here as that corner should have been trimmed out differently. If it wasn't possible to obtain a long enough piece of base trim to get to the corner, the trim should have been spliced 12 to 16 inches before the corner.  Eyecatchers shoud not be too close together and whenever possible shoud be hidden on a side piece not the front. I would not use that particular spot as a primary discussion point in the conversation about his not meeting the standard of work previously discussed. You probably won't get everything fixed so prioritize the highly visible portions between 3 to 5 feet off the ground and the front of horizontal surfaces. I would do an extra round of prep in those spots after one round everywhere.

I had a longer answer but ultimately I think the major problem is a miscommunication of the expectations and also what "a lot of prep" is. Four hours of prep is not going to take care of the pre-existing conditions of previously painted millwork and to correct that finish carpentry. Four hours is not a "lot" of prep. Paint can't correct the underlying finish carpentry issues with that corner you show. Hours or days of prep to correct the issues I see could.

What always amazes me with some of these postings is they have issues when the job is completed. Isn't anyone watching what is going on, and bringing issues up as they are happening, asking questions etc.

Any job I have had done, or will have done - I'll be there to keep my eye on things.

I realize not everyone can take the time to watch over their projects, but if they don't stuff happens. No one cares as much as you do.

As someone who has experience on both sides of this issue, I have heard lots of comments. Typical painter responses include that isn't dry yet, only the first coat, this (owner supplied) paint isn't covering well, is too thin or too thick, conditions are too hot, too cold, too humid, etc. How is a homeowner supposed to differentiate between legitimate issues and excuses? Very few homeowners ever check references on painters especially for smaller projects and when they do, most don't know the right questions to ask. 

I have also heard the line about the job not being finished yet so don't complain now.  Sorry but that one isn't going to work since I know your response will be it is too late to fix that now when the job is complete.

Some owners don't want to pay for prep work yet expect a great result.  My favorite is the person who hires a pro because their own painting looks awful. Then they don't want to pay for prep work because they didn't need that much prep when they painted. Another common issue arises when a coat of paint doesn't hide the preexisting problems. Painting over brush marks won't make them disappear so accept them or pay for the prep work needed.

Some good points Lyndee. I have often heard prep is more important than the job itself.

I think the painter is supposed to do the prep work, that is the normal custom and practice for walls and cabinetry.

Can you take him to small claims court?

LyndeeLee- that’s exactly correct when you say “the issue here is the work not matching up to the expected quality as described by the painter and expected for the agreed price.” — a lot of people are commenting on people not wanting to pay a painter for prep work. That is not the case here. He could have quoted us $4,000 and we would have said ok because we believed we were all in agreement on what the expectation was. This was not a case of us not wanting to pay for prep work. We WANTED a lovely end result and have the ability to pay for that as well. We never mentioned to him wanting to save money on any part of this project.
Also- we do take responsibility for the corner piece. I told my partner when he installed that, that it needed to be changed out. Gotta pick your battles and my partner is bullheaded and clearly sees now why I said that.

Angel- we did not get more than one quote and my partner now realizes that was a mistake. I always like to get 3 quotes for any work done, and in this case my partner was impatient to have the office painted. This painter came recommended on NextDoor. Also, We did check in each day with the painter and walked into the room. There was paper masking the windows which was apparently masking most of the flaws until yesterday when they took the paper off. I hope that your comment “no one cares as much as you do” isn’t true for all professionals. That would be sad.

Palimpsest- I wouldn’t know how long prep takes. The painter said the project would take one week to one and a half weeks and mentioned before starting that most of his time would be spent on prep. I think I’ve finally learned that you can’t fully rely on or trust professionals even when you pay them enough to be hands off of the project.

Dana, what was the painter’s reponse when you brought your concerns to him? Any resolution, perhaps a partial re-do, in the works? The room, minus the close-ups, looks gorgeous.

Beth H- we haven’t paid him yet. I am unsure at this point how to go about this. I’m not a good negotiator because I get very emotionally involved. My partner is a great negotiator, but we are altogether inexperienced in how to deal with this kind of thing. Any advice on how to go about this would be helpful. I will attach some more photos.

A few more

And a few more

do you have any before shots? What all of these close ups look like before he got to them?

what exactly was this guy working with from the start?

you're zooming in on a lot of the surfaces and of course they're going to look bad when magnified.

was this already here and painted? looks like two diff wood finishes. before any paint touched this, those gaps should have been filled w/wood filler and sanded smooth. all of it. The person who built this should have done that.

Did you point this out to the painter and tell him you wanted all of these gaps/joints redone?

was it previously painted or just built? Was it already painted?

for instance, this. were there previous coats that he just painted over? was he supposed to strip off the previous finish from all this trim? sand it? what was discussed.

this looks like peeling paint, partial, and some type of patch job, that someone hastily painted. what did this look like prior to him arriving on the scene? did he do this?

have you spoken to him after viewing this? when you point out all of the shoddy work, what does he say?

I'd love to hear his side and what he has to say.

Someone mentioned taking him to small claims court. The invoice has not been paid

yet, so it would be the other way around - the Painter taking the customer to court if it's not paid. Or even putting a lien on your house to get it paid.

Since no prepping is mentioned in your estimate, the judge would go by that.

That's your contract.

"we haven’t paid him yet."

Goody Goody Gumdrops!

I wouldn't.

I have never seen such a terrible job in my entire life!

Was this done by the person you spoke with and whose references you checked?

Or did he pick up someone off the street to do the work who clearly knew nothing about prep work?

You are definitely not overeacting, this work is terrible and I have done much better prep work as a nonprofessional in my own home. $2400 is a sizable amount of money for that space as well, so he as better well sand down the problems and fix his work. I‘ve asked painters/contractors to fix their work for me and if done nicely they should as professionals have no problem fixing the work. With painting you do get what you pay for but my expectations here would be high. My general contractor is not a perfectionist but also decent and charges very reasonably, so when he leaves little places to be cleaned up I wont pick a battle with him and just clean them up myself. Good luck!

I differ about getting the painter back- he is a lazy so-and-so and a liar to boot - to wit- "he needed to clean up the built-ins to prepare for the semi-gloss look" . I wouldn't let him to a thing on your property.

Do you know how many hours he was on your property?

Maybe just pay him some hourly wage that is not much.

If he threatens to take you to court, you can tell him that you will paper the internet with reviews and photographs of his work.

As well as the state contractors bureau, the Better Business Bureau, etc

Did he purchase the paint?

Could be way better i would've charged more 2400 to leave all that perfect no way I would've been at 2900

I’d eat the cost as a lesson learned and hire a real pro to redo it all, the right way. I couldn’t live with it. Get three bids (your husband had his chance), and research the contractors. Nextdoor is not the place to go for referrals for reputable, high level work. It’s notorious for bad recommendations. Up to you if you want to try to recoup funds from this painter, but sounds like there is enough ambiguity on expectations and crystal clear terms that, as I said, I’d swallow it as a hard lesson.

@Dana Schult if you haven't paid him yet then if this was me I would talk to him. I would be very direct and to the point, "Lenard, there are parts of this paint job that are not complete. Can you correct them? (tell him everything). If you do not trust him to fix this then tell him , "I am disappointed in this and it is not a $2400 job. " See what he says. Maybe he'll drop the price or you try to renegotiate down. You aren't going to use him again so there's no point in sugar coating anything and their is no problem with asking. He can always say "no". And no personal jabs :-) like "You are a horrible painter". . You aren't happy with the work. Tell him.

Beth- the state of the pieces were not perfect. That’s for sure. However, we would have perfectly patched up all seams, gaps and holes prior to him painting if it were not agreed upon that he would do that. We are capable of doing that. We wanted to outsource so we hired him. The price was to reflect the time it would take to prep the built ins for said paint.

I will look for some before photos. Where you comment on the partial peeling paint, no he did not do that. It is caulking that needed to be sanded down prior to painting.

Rockin fine finish- can you reiterate what you mean? I’m not understanding. Are you a painter? Are you saying that you would’ve charged more than $2400 to leave it perfect? This is helpful information if you could specify. Thanks!

As an update- we contacted the painter and told him we were pretty concerned about addressed the seams down the sides that could have been filled prior and any holes or dents or spots that needed sanding that didn’t get sanded to our liking.
Painter has responded and says the spraying has been completed and anything else needed would have to be touched up by hand. He says he will come on Monday to discuss our concerns and see if he can remedy any of it.

Dana yes for the amount of work that needs to be done and have look look really nice would've taken more time which means more money. It might be a case of you chose the wrong person and under paid not sure what's the case.

Wowza, some really over the top reactions about a person being lazy, a liar to boot, worst paint job, etc. The OP doesn't have an agreement with the painter and assumed they were going to "fill nail holes and gaps in the builtins". Unless there is an agreement that the painter would completely refinish the gouges, chips, mismatched moulding profiles, replace trim, scrape off all old paint (doesn't looks like bubbles, looks like thick drops of paint that were dried on years ago) etc., I frankly think these are very high expectations for what $2400 would cover. I personally paid $1000 about 5 years ago to have baseboard trim , a couple columns, and some door trim painted and it was in close to pristine condition. As in zero prep work. I am sure OP's painter expected to do some prep work (I suspect they filled in some holes, tried to improve appearance some) but unless explicitly stated, I cannot imagine expecting someone to just voluntarily do extensive labor to prepare those built ins-- and unlesss wood is replaced they still won't look great. Frankly, I would not take it on because it's a cobbled together built in and will never look like it has a factory finish. That's unrealistic. If you want it to be better, you need to have something better to start with, which means new builtins and trim work. And hey, I did a similar thing once many years ago, putting together some commercial bookcases and you know what, it really never looked all that good-- and I would not have expected a painter to overcome all of my carpenterial shortcomings with paint. And I get that me paying $1k for a lot less and easier work has no bearing on the fact that the painter said they would paint the room for $2400, but I do find it hard to believe that any painter expected to completely renovate the built ins... and if that was OPs expectation, and they thought the painter agreed with that characterization, that should have definitely been in writing.

I might have missed it but did he specifically say what kind of prep he would do? Wood filler in gaps and nail holes etc?  I personally feel that level of prep is another ballgame compared to normal paint prep.  If he didn't say this specifically nor did you, I think what you got is reasonable. Just in my experience.

@mimimomy I tend to agree with you here. I think ultimately expectations and deliverables weren’t clear on either end. To get a great finish on a patchwork set of built-ins (plus walls, trim and ceilings), I would have expected to have been quoted and paid ~ 4-5kish. I would not have blinked at that, honestly.

Price surely depends on where you live, I am sure. My wonderful painter works for $20/hour period. If he had done this job it would have represented 3 full weeks of work. Hmm.

IMO he started with another poor paint job already there and unless you had a wriiten signed off agreement about the amount of prep work involved to make those cabinets look new this is as good as it gets. prepping wood work takes a long time and unfortunately you assumed something that was not written in to the contract . As for the price we have no idea how big the space was all the wood work involved and to be honest if you left all the dings and gaps to be filled you needed to have that in the contract.

150 sq ft.

We live in Austin, Texas.

I could be wrong but a lot of the things I see indicate at least one layer of paint on what was there.

A number of other things I see are dings that are wear and tear of 25 years. And then I see a some DIY type carpentry. I am not trying to be critical of your skills but finish carpentry is something that not even a lot of finish carpenters are that good at anymore.

This is the process I am going through right now to get a good finish on old work.

Things were basically taken down to almost bare wood before the painter even got here, and he patched and sanded, primed and sanded, primed and lightly sanded again and now will apply paint. All told it was a couple weeks work to get to this point. I have found in previous project that, if you are dealing with previously applied layers of paint or millwork with defects it's often cheaper to remove the old woodwork and start from bare wood. Layers of latex paint are often so gummy they don't sand.

The stairs themselves will be carpeted so you can ignore them.

And just as a comparison, someone mentioned above that their painter charges $20 an hour. This is going to be local. Mine charges over $40, (and usually he has an assistant and its per person) which is a little high for our area but he works thoroughly and at speed.

I also wanted to add, which gets lost in the discussion, that I think overall the room makes a good impression and is going to look good when it has things in it. There are many houses here that, because they are 100+ years old have irregular woodwork and layers of paint and it still looks good it its way.

@palimpset "I also wanted to add, which gets lost in the discussion, that I think overall the room makes a good impression and is going to look good when it has things in it. There are many houses here that, because they are 100+ years old have irregular woodwork and layers of paint and it still looks good it its way." Totally agree with this statement. I think the room is very pretty.

This is from the Fine Paints of Europe website, but my painter does this sort of work for people. This does not even represent the Brilliant finish which is the super shiny lacquer look you can get with their paint.

Anyway, I think this is the look you are going for, and my painter says that this takes many steps of painting and sanding to get this sort of uniformity. It's a little different than doing the same to a piece of furniture under controlled conditions in a shop. He will be at client's houses for weeks if this is what they want, and really that means that he is also doing other jobs to let things dry and such in between.

There wasn’t an existing bad paint job. There were nail holes and some seams that needed to be filled, and some caulking that needed to be sanded down.

There was no paint on these built ins

@mimimomy and @lynndowis good insight. We would’ve paid $4k. We did discuss with him prepping the builtins extensively. Next time I will make sure that is on paper, I was under the impression that “sand and clean” on his quote reflected the in person discussion we had. At the least, I would expect holes to be filled and gaps to be caulked. Would’ve paid any amount honestly.

No paint on any of the millwork you have shown at all?

While I realize this thought won't help you in this situation, perhaps it might be useful for others. There are a few categories of painters who advertise for business such as high end painters who charge more than most others, are choosy about their projects and have the results to justify their prices. This seems like the desired person for this poster. Large companies, perhaps franchises,  also advertise widely, use sales people to do bids and talk up the company, and will hire nearly any painter willing to work for them and deal with their high turnover.  Those firms may give you good results but you won't see the same person who made the promises showing up to run the job and you won't get a great price or great quality.  Small painters who advertise are new to the local market or aren't having enough successful projects to generate referrals and repeat customers.
The best midrange painters don't advertise because they have all the business they wish with referrals and repeat customers.  If you need a referral when you are new in town, stop at a real paint store and chat with the staff. They will have a batch of business card and might select a couple for you when you tell them the type of project you have. Otherwise ask your friends and neighbors with similar tastes and personalities. If your friend has a flexible schedule and you don't, be sure her painter doen't have a maybe tomorrow, maybe next week approach. 
My partner started helping with his dad's painters when he was a kid and has been painting between other pursuits for 40 years.  He has never advertised or been without work for many years. I met him when he was working for a friend at her new house.  He had painted the exterior for the previous owner who passed on the name. That guy had gotten the name from another neighbor. A few years ago our real estate agent introduced him to a couple needing some work before listing which has led to months of work for friends and neighbors and children and many repeat projects.

Lyndee Lee, that's a great idea. Another is if you have a local lumber store (not the big chains) --- I got a name of a painter, he didn't have time, gave me the name of another painter. GREAT painter. Gave me some fab painting tips too, for when I do my own.

I really appreciate every single person who has commented here. This is the first painter we have ever hired and we are learning a lot. Your comments with your insights and knowledge have been so helpful.
The painter will be here tomorrow morning and I am going to see what he can remedy. I will keep you all posted, and if anyone has any more advice on how to handle the negotiation of remedying some of these areas, let me know! Some of you did speak to that and it was mighty helpful.

Thanks!!