Hiring painters - expectations

[ny biker]

This week I've had painters doing work in my condo. Though things look good from a distance, I'm disappointed by the the quality of the work when I look up-close. I expected them to use painter's tape or an edger or something to get clean lines around the trim. Is that unrealistic?

This is the first time I've ever hired anyone to paint for me. If you've gone through this before, what was your experience?

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Also they rushed to finish (stayed 3 hours late -- I had to go out to dinner to get out of their way) because they were told they had to finish yesterday because of a snowstorm shutting things down today. They did not do a good job cleaning up. I had to vacuum my bedroom at 10 pm last night before I could sleep in it. Despite repeated requests by me to cover my furniture, I have white dust all over the place and white paint stains on my red loveseat. I turned off the heat pump and fan each morning but they turned the fan back on so the dust circulated everywhere. This is the filter that I removed from the air handler last night.

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This is an old building -- they were supposed to follow EPA guidelines for working with lead paint dust.

They will be coming back for "touch ups" so I need to figure out how much rework I should ask for.

Thanks for your input.

[Crankin]

None of this seems right to me.
We've only hired one professional painter for the inside, when we moved to this house. Since it was the person my older son worked for during 2 college summers, it might not be a good comparison, but, yes, he used tape and all of the nearby furniture was covered or moved. And, when my DH has painted, he always did that, too. Since it was just him painting, with the occasional help of his brother in law, I almost felt he was like that character in the Murphy Brown show! He was always here when I came home from work.
I would call the boss and specify your complaints and review the terms of the contract.

[Blueberry]

I've had limited painting done, and no - this doesn't sound right.

Do you have anything in writing? Do you have the EPA lead certification in writing? It might be worth calling EPA. They are pretty serious from what I hear about the lead contamination issues - and it sure sounds like you have them. http://www2.epa.gov/sites/production/files/documents/steps.pdf Who have you been working with?

Issues to consider:
How much re-work do you want given the level of destruction they have caused? Would you rather pay less than the contract and have someone else fix it? Would you want them back (without you there?) after this?
What do you want done (if anything) about lead contamination? Perhaps a professional cleaning (steaming carpets, etc.)?
Can the damaged furniture be cleaned, or would it need to be re-covered? They should definitely cover making that right.

What I mess. My sympathies.

[rebeccaC]

Sounds like problems coming from a rush job. Where did the white dust come from? If from sanding lead paint I’d look into what needs to be done to mitigate that problem and ask them to take care of that, recut the areas where overlap is on the floor and door moldings/walls, take care of removing paint from furniture and any other painting related problems. My condo insists anyone working in the building be licensed, bonded and insured. If they are that may give you some recourse if you don’t get any satisfaction from talking to them….and like blueberry wrote deal with the epa if they didn't do things according to the ways they were legally suppose to.

hoping they make things good for you.

[ny biker]

Thanks very much for your replies.

I sent an email to the company president, who was the person who provided the estimate and was my contact person before the work began. (I actually planned to draft the email tonight, sleep on it and then possibly edit it tomorrow, but I accidentally hit the send button, so I'm committed. Note to self: don't enter anything in the To: box until you're ready to hit send.)

The company was highly recommended by someone who has worked with them in the past, so I'm hoping that I will not have a problem getting them to come back and fix the sloppy work. I have some plastic dropcloths here which I will use to cover the furniture myself.

In the meantime I'm moving ahead planning subsequent home improvment projects -- someone came today to measure my windows for new honeycomb shades, I scheduled an appointment to get an estimate for new hardwood floors and will be calling a second flooring company on Monday, and I picked up some sample tiles and paint for the bathroom renovation. I'm frustrated by the painters but remaining optimistic that all will turn out okay in the end.

Thanks again!

[lph]

I'm just now doing some painting of my own. It looks like they did use tape, but slapped it on fast. It's a lot faster to just stretch it out and make a straight line than to actually look at where the trim goes and carefully adjust it as you go. Very shoddy. Admittedly, it took me a while to learn this myself, but it's the very least I would expect from a professional.

[ny biker]

Update. The painters came back yesterday. Over the weekend I found many other issues in addition to the sloppy work around the trim, and I marked everything with bits of blue painters tape. The living room and hallway were full of them, while the bedroom only had a few issues.

Before the work had started, I had marked up the walls in the bedroom to point out the flaws that needed to be fixed -- holes and cracks to fill, nail pops, areas around outlets and light switches that were damaged when I removed the old switchplates which had been thickly painted over, etc. When they first showed up the crew leader started circling things to be fixed on the walls and he seemed to have a good eye, so I did not do the same thing in the hall and living room. Instead I only marked a few big things like holes in ceiling where plant hooks used to be. I think that was a mistake -- I should have gone full-on control freak and marked up everything that I wanted them to fix. This is what I did over the weekend.

So yesterday morning I walked around with the crew leader and pointed out various things that I had marked. I told him that I understood things would not be perfect since the walls were old, some of them are plaster, and the painters hired by the previous owners had just slapped a new coat over all the nail holes and chipped paint without trying to fix anything. Two walls in particular were really quite a mess. But I said that I hoped he would be able to fix most of it. I also said that I understood they were rushed last week due to the impending snow day, which was why I wanted them to neaten up the paint next to all the trim.

The fine print in the contract says that they are not responsible to damage to furniture, so I haven't brought that up again. Last week I had hung plastic drop clothes in the closets to protect everything in them from dust, and had also hung a plastic drop cloth across the kitchen door to keep that room clean. Yesterday morning I got up extra early so I'd have more time to cover things. I spread a plastic drop cloth over the bed (on top of of the comforter, pillows, pajamas etc) and tucked it in all around so it would all be protected. Then I wrapped plastic around the love seat and fabric chair in the living room. I don't care about the rug, since I plan to get rid of it in the next few weeks. I will vacuum tonight and will spend the weekend wiping down all the wood furniture. After the new floor is installed I will have the living room furniture steam cleaned. Unfortunately I'll also have to buy one of those furniture touch-up pens because they scratched my black bookcases. (They also gouged the top of one dresser -- seriously I don't understand how they caused so much damage.)

The good news is that things now look great. Not perfect, because as I said some of the walls were really a mess and I understand there's only so much you can do with an old home. But overall I'm happy with it. And the big lesson I learned was that it's better to be a crazy control freak in managing this type of work.

Now the question is -- how do I keep the next round of contractors from trashing the place? I think I will buy a big roll of bubble wrap and tape it up along all the corners and door frames for protection.

By the way the wall colors are "Salty Brine" (green) in the living room and "Alpine" (light blue) in the bedroom, both from a paint manufacturer called C2. And they are beautiful. They look nice by lamplight, and I really love them in daylight.

On to the new hardwood floors...