posted by Shelley
After getting ugly with my painter/contractor this morning, he showed up with a couple workers in an attempt to appease me. I didn’t go in depth with all the workmanship problems in my last post, but I will mention one of them now. Arriving very late one night while working last summer, my painter backed into my privacy fence. The excuse was that his brakes failed, and they probably did. I’m certain that alcohol had nothing whatsoever to do with it, even though it was a daily/nightly occurrence while on the job.
The workers hadn’t been here long this afternoon when my painter came in and said that he would purchase and pick up the boards to replace the old ones on the privacy fence, and I could pay him for them. The fence wasn’t new, so I figure that I’ll eat the cost of the boards, they’ll replace the 4″ x 4″ treated posts that were broken in the ‘accident’, nail the new boards up and we can all move on. The painter dude leaves to pick up supplies and I walk outside. The treated 4″ x 4″ posts have now been replaced with used landscaping timbers.
At this point — we are long past the ‘customers want you to GET it right’ concept — and haven’t even gotten close to the ‘MAKE it right’ one either. Am I a magnet for this type of treatment when it come to hiring workers, or is my mistake simply trusting the integrity of another business person? Now I understand that expectations are different for everyone, and what some think looks great another will interpret as junk. Maybe the gentleman I employed would be satisfied with landscaping timbers in place of 4″ x 4″ treated lumber posts. I’m not. I would be just fine with USED posts that are like I had — I’m NOT fine with a substandard substitute.
This house needing painting — that’s why I got bids in the first place. Funny…it looked better BEFORE I paid to have it painted. Check out the photos of the house now that are in an earlier post and compare them to this photo was taken BEFORE Tim Robbins, Jr. started work outside:
If I had it to do over, I would definitely not have hired this firm — I also will never let anyone spray paint on the outside of a house again either. Not only does it make one Hell of a mess, it doesn’t cover well either. Here’s a photo taken the first week of August, 2007 once the paint work was finished, but before all the masking tape was removed:
