Painter quit with my house half painted

[karlhungus]

He is a local who works a lot in our small community. I'd seen his sign in yards and made a mental note to remember him when it came time to do the exterior of our house.

His bid was unusual for our two story, 2500 sqf house. One man crew, all done with a 4" hand brush. Flat rate, 40$ an hour plus his reciepts for materials. No more than 7 hours a day. Pretty likable guy.

Lot of issues getting him to show up. He explained he had very good customers with rentals they need to get rented and wanted to repay their loyalty by bumping them ahead of me. This happened a lot. Twice in one day even. I actually didn't mind as my wallet was recovering from our recently installed gutters.

After a lot of other minor hiccups he started Monday. I called my wife to get a report. She mentioned he showed up late, smelled like he had just gotten high, and immediately invited himself in to use the bathroom. I got home to discover him painting the dark color first and generally doing pretty sloppy work. He left early and left a mess in the yard I had to tidy up.

Yikes. This wasn't going as planned. I figured I would see what was waiting for me when I got home from day two and go from there.

He called me around lunchtime and announced he couldn't figure out how to get to the back of my chimey.

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I told him work on something else and we would discuss it later. When I got home from work early he was nowhere to be found. However his work had gotten even sloppier. Drips, tons of sags, bare spots, general halfassery.

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I finally got a hold of him on the phone that evening, he basically announced he was quitting before I could tell him he was fired. Not sure what the motivation was, but the chimney thing seemed pretty flimsy.

To his credit, he said he would walk away without asking for any money.

I would have been better off had he not done anything. I'm back to getting estimates, waiting for a spot in the schedule, and fixing all the mess ups.

 

[HRJoe]

Wowsa.

 

[jdsac]

Forty bucks an hour for a brush & bucket guy?
Next time get a firm bid- sorry it didn't work, but it looks savable.

 

[visiting guest]

latex cleans off glass easy
once it dries

 

[CGT80]

Painting the siding first is normal. We would brush or spray the body, and then paint the trim. I always removed lights and anything else that come off easily, and I didn't drip all over. Heck, I even painted a roll up garage door jamb right over the top of a red corvette without getting paint on it. The owner didn't care, and he was stacking stuff from the garage shelf, on the car.

Spraying that would have been much faster, but brushing does work the paint in very well. The trim can be rolled with a small roller or brushed and the edges of the trim can be cut in with white, or leave them all dark and just face off the trim for a faster job.

If the guy was getting high, then that probably lead to bad work, if he was ever good. I had a guy help me one time that got high before work (he admitted it one day to some of the other crew that he helped out, and then got fired) and he climbed an extension ladder to reach the center of an entry way inside a condo and got scared at the top and couldn't get down. He also spent a couple hours patching in one sheet of drywall in a closet, that should have been an easy job.

I have heard that painters like to drink or get high, but I don't like getting buzzed on alcohol and the one time I unknowingly got a hold of a "special" brownie was anything but fun. Of course, the person who made the brownies would only eat an 1/8 to a 1/4 of one at a time for legit medical use and I had the whole thing. I am also a bit ocd and have to have control of situations when possible and I am very particular, which helps when you do finish work.

I had some customers who would have me work by the hour like that, but they knew my work. Now you know what this guy is capable of, even if it wasn't his best. Find some bids, or another person who can do cleaner work. A step ladder on the roof would work for the chimney. I usually let my uncle and cousin do the high work, as I was not comfortable with it. I have run lifts many times and would do iffy stuff to reach the ceiling in a warehouse, but lifts rarely tip or slide over. When working on my own, I didn't take big or tall exterior paint jobs.

 

[ADSR]

This is a sad case and it's very common. Functional junkies work till then can't hide it any longer. OP, I know where you're coming from and it's a pain in the **** to deal with the mess he's left. There's also the fact that the guy is probably in trouble. I've had to pull guys aside apart from work and tell them plain out that we need to get you some help before you go down the drain. I really don't know what it is about the painting trade, but all the painters I know love booze and drugs.

 

[Al Bundy]

Look at the bright side. You got half your house painted for free.

 

[speed bump]

I don't have anything add about your situation but painting a house by yourself with a 4" brush would ****.

 

[Rex_A_Lott]

I wouldnt feel right about not paying him anything, but its definitely not my idea of the kind of work I would expect for $40/hr. At least he admitted he couldnt handle the chimney and quit before he messed up too bad or got hurt.
I'm not sure why most painters are drunks, maybe its because there's not a lot of overhead and its the kind of work where they can work at their own pace and not have to pass a drug test, and its easily picked up. Good luck.

 

[Famous Tool Guy]

Oh man that's tough!

 

[SDBOB1]

I worked with my father in construction for years. He was old school.Not a drinker .We were on a new home,1200 Sq ft. This is no bs,he painted oil 1 coat with a 4" brush in one day! Approx. 8hrs. and no paint running down bucket,or walls.Another painter I new would brag he could out paint a roller with a 4" brush.my father and him grew up with wooden ladders,4" brush,oil base paint,and working 10hr days getting paid for 8,and no breaks.

 

[Moose97]

I wouldnt feel right about not paying him anything, but its definitely not my idea of the kind of work I would expect for $40/hr. At least he admitted he couldnt handle the chimney and quit before he messed up too bad or got hurt.
I'm not sure why most painters are drunks, maybe its because there's not a lot of overhead and its the kind of work where they can work at their own pace and not have to pass a drug test, and its easily picked up. Good luck.

I would have no problem not paying. You agreed to do a job that you didn't complete. Had he asked for money for what he had done I likely would have but he's a big boy and he said he didn't want it. I'd take him at his word...on that anyway.

 

[four.cycle]

If you know what you're doing a roller and brush work just fine. I've never used a sprayer in my life.
That's some fairly half-assed work there, but I would have done the walls before that trim too. If the trim's a lighter tone, however, you might be having to apply two coats to cover up the sloppy along the edges.

I've landed two gigs from Craigslist ads where I had to go in and salvage/fix half-assed work like that - one of them was supposedly a "professional" four-man crew that spent an entire week re-painting the interior of the home but wasn't able to cut a straight edge between a wall and a ceiling throughout the whole house.

Just find somebody else who knows what they're doing who will show up sober.

 

[four.cycle]

^ on that light fixture - that would have taken all of about one minute to remove those two little nuts, pull the fixture out away from the wall, wrap a plastic grocery sack around it and secure it with a few inches of masking tape.
that's just a dumb rookie mistake there.

 

[ratdoggy]

Look at the bright side ...
Now you only have to pay a ****** $50 to finish the house...
The humor of this post will be lost on you ...
Unless you saw the other recent thread about painting a house estimate....

 

[PelicanPines]

Every job looks easy to the NON-professional. They probably figured oh yea... going to make serious bank... job is easy... bang bang... wait... this is hard... fark it... i quit.

That's the story of the magnetic truck door sign club...

 

[Casey69]

that is pretty awful. props for using a brush though. i'd use a roller for most of that & just use a brush for the siding ends. probably be done in three days.

seems like all the hired guys spray now.

 

[jeff lary]

Man $40 per hr that is a lot of money!!... I have painted my home twice. It is a lot of work scrape sand prime paint two coats with a brush if I got $ 40 per hour to do that I would be doing that today. That's a but load of money isn't it? Or do I live too far back in the woods and am impressed too easily? Hope It all works out for you.

 

[Ipassgas]

I bet his name is Steve.

I need my big ***, tall house painted. No way I'm getting 30'+ in the air to do that. I get some quotes. Some kinda high, some

I'm mulling over what to do when I see two guys painting a neighbors tall, big *** house. I stop the car, jump out and say wazzup?

It's a GC and helper finishing the job they're on. The painters didn't show, were too expensive or whatever. But the next job doesn't need a helper, so the helper (Steve) has some free time.

Steve the Idiot Painter walks over to my house and says I have access to a lift/ladders, can do it for $x in six days if you buy supplies. Terms: 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 in dollar bills.

I said when can you start?

Things start great. Steve the Idiot Painter brings his own helper days one and two. Doing great work, but show up late, leave early types. It's no emergency, so I don't sweat it. Day 3, helper is gone, Steve the Idiot Painter is late. Steve the Idiot Painter was staying with his helper, and some bad blood developed, so Steve the Idiot Painter is couch surfing.

Steve the Idiot Painter continues on his own 2 more days, almost no progress, but painting is good. Then he needs a tiny $20 advance for food. I'm very unhappy about this, but he is doing good (but slow) work, when he shows, and there was some rain. He's about a third done, so I tell him it's coming out of his next installment.

This goes on, with his $ needs increasing with his pace. We basically end up with me paying him ~$5/hr as he goes.

He gets THIS CLOSE to finishing when I realize he has a problem. Likely heroin.

He got up on a ladder (30+ feet) and dropped a paint cup. I found him half mesmerized, half cleaning it up when he announced he had to go (it was late by his standards). I finished cleaning the paint.

His ride lost a little baggie of something in the driveway. My wife threw it out and told me later.

He calls three days later and says he's coming tomorrow. By that point, I'd used the remainder of the $ he was due to rent a lift to get to the part he was always "going to do tomorrow". I told him I had a lift coming and don't show up. He says great! I can get the rest done in a day. I said don't ever come back, or I'll shoot you.

I finished painting.

A week later, the cops show up asking about Steve the Idiot Painter. I tell them how I left things a week prior. Apparently, he stole his step mom's jewelry, and had been living out of a friends boat. The friend took that as news, and wasn't pleased.

My 6 day, $X job took 36 days and my painting the tall parts that prompted me to hire a painter in the first place.

You're not alone in painter horror stories.

 

[landlord30]

I would beg him to come back anyway possible just so I could fire him rather than giving him the satisfaction of quitting on his own. I'd have to get some kind of satisfaction out of that mess.

I'd make sure your new bids don't have painters taking advantage of you because of the situation you are in.

 

[draglink]

This post hits home this spring. I have always done the painting at my home. This year I had to do from the tip of the roof down to the foundation. Roof was done using brush and roller. Siding, trim, windows and doors I used a 2.5" and 3.5" brush. I really don't mind painting. My wife is starting to complain....she says I am too old to be climbing around on the roof. 49 isn't old!

before :

during and complete:

 

[draglink]

I was thinking about getting estimates to see what I save by doing myself. I am guessing I save $6-$7K maybe? I have $450 in materials

 

[Coolabah]

This post hits home this spring. I have always done the painting at my home. This year I had to do from the tip of the roof down to the foundation. Roof was done using brush and roller. Siding, trim, windows and doors I used a 2.5" and 3.5" brush. I really don't mind painting. My wife is starting to complain....she says I am too old to be climbing around on the roof. 49 isn't old!

<snip>

Nice job !
What is that horizontal bar thing called at the top of your extension ladder ? Looks like a great idea for stability but I've never seen that before .

 

[ZRX61]

Nice job !
What is that horizontal bar thing called at the top of your extension ladder ? Looks like a great idea for stability but I've never seen that before .

Adds stability & also acts as a standoff when you're doing gutters/soffits etc

 

[stimpy]

its a ladder stabilizer they sell them at most stores around here there nice as they can also be used to hold the ladder away from the building so you can paint under it werner sells them

 

[Coolabah]

Adds stability & also acts as a standoff when you're doing gutters/soffits etc

its a ladder stabilizer they sell them at most stores around here there nice as they can also be used to hold the ladder away from the building so you can paint under it werner sells them

Wow thanks guys, knowing to google "Werner" made all the difference -just ordered one online with local pick-up from Masters ( kind of = Lowes in US ) and must be good karma finally catching up with me or something but also its on sale 20% off !!! Never would have found this without reading this post and it will be perfect for my repainting outside of the house job I am starting in a week or two.

Gotta love GJ.

 

[draglink]

couldn't paint the roof without the standoff. It hangs over the other side and locks the ladder as I paint the 2 valleys

 

[JerryC]

This is a sad case and it's very common. Functional junkies work till then can't hide it any longer. OP, I know where you're coming from and it's a pain in the **** to deal with the mess he's left. There's also the fact that the guy is probably in trouble. I've had to pull guys aside apart from work and tell them plain out that we need to get you some help before you go down the drain. I really don't know what it is about the painting trade, but all the painters I know love booze and drugs.

In my youth I took a job as an apartment painter. i had heard the stories about painters being drinkers. Only one guy was not a heavy drinker and that is because he was heavily in to his kung fu training.

I cant really say why it is. Maybe they were drinkers before they took the job, that was the case for myself, or if it came later. What I can say is that painting is hard work when you do it for a living. Working on a ladder is much harder than most people would believe. Even rolling paint isn't easy, put a pound on the end of 4 foot pole and wave it around all day.

In the apartments about a third were evictions without electricity for AC. that makes for thirsty work. I did it for a couple of years, my liver aged 10 years.

 

[CJ7VFR]

Maybe painters are drinkers because the buzz takes the edge off of knowing you are 30 feet in the air on a ladder so you are not afraid of being up there?

I know from what little painting I do around my house that being on the ladder *****, and climbing up and down with one hand (because the other hand is holding a paint brush, or paint can or whatever) is not something I would want to do for a living.

On a side note, I also have one of the ladder stabilizers. That thing is great. I use mine all the time whenever I have to pull those stupid maple tree helicopter seed pods out of my gutters! I raise the ladder up so that the stabilizer sits on the roof, just above the gutters. This way the ladder is not sitting right on the edge of the gutter. And the stabilizer puts the ladder just far enough away from the gutter so that I can use a bungee cord to hook a 5 gallon bucket to a rung on the ladder to put the seed pods in.

Jim

 

[jives]

I'm reading this while taking a break from painting my bathroom. Been in our new house for 5 years and never got around to it. I hate painting that much. Saint of a wife never hassled me about it. Painting. . . prep, patience, precision. I have none of the above.

 

[karlhungus]

I solicited a few more bids to finish the job. It was a little unusual because I already had the paint in my possession and had a partially completed house. I'm guessing it is standard practice for painters to pad the bill by overestimating gallons needed/price of paint because the quotes didn't come down much.

Little history: last month I had new gutters installed. After some consideration, I went all out. 6" inch gutters, larger downspouts, flashing inserted under the shakes, leaf guards, gutters for the shed, the works... All in all it came out to about 5,000. They do look good, almost like crown moulding. I had tried to time it so the gutters would be removed, the house painted, and the new gutters installed. My original painter bounced me around his schedule so much I eventually just said "screw it".

I ended up hiring a company from my original round of quotes. As it turns out they are more of a broker, the estimator shows up with the company polo shirt and the iPad does a very impressive quote, and then they promptly farm it out to the Mexicans in the beater truck with the shark cage on it.

Fine with me, all I really care about it a good finished product. I keep a pretty close eye on them and they are corner cutters, but willing to fix things brought to their attention. After all the prep, they spray the body of the house, and I notice about 10 gallons left over. I request a second coat and they push back pretty hard on the idea. After each of us making separate calls to the broker, and consulting the bid (which says one coat), I agree to tack on 200 extra dollars for their troubles.

The next day they start complaining about the trim paint, it's not applying smoothly. It does look a little funny to me as well. Not wanting to get caught in adjusting the quote a second time (or having the bill inflated) I agree to go buy them the Sherwin Williams paint they are comfortable with. Another 150 dollars down the drain.

This morning checking on their work I immediately notice my brand new gutters have 2 pretty noticeable dents in them.

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I find the boss, tell him they are new, expensive and please be careful. I think about it, look at it a bunch a decide it needs to me fixed. They are surprisingly eye catching, very prominent locations, and dammit I'm almost 10,000 dollars into this thing. Towards the end of the day the boss starts asking me if I like the job, will I recommend him on google, etc... I tell him I appreciate the hard work, it looks good, but we will have to have my gutters repaired. Things immediately get tense, almost hostile. Fortunately, they are almost done. The boss decides he no longer speaks English and I have to go through one of the crew to translate now. I point out a few minor things which they still take care of.

After they clean up, the ring the bell and ask to be paid. This is unusual, I gave the down payment the broker, not them. I explain we have to address the gutter situation before I pay in full. They then ask for the 200$ for the second coat sprayed. Leery of being double charged, I call the broker to confirm I should pay them directly. He doesn't answer my call, but texts the crew and they stop asking. The story on the gutter changes from "what's the big deal" to "we didn't do that, they were already that way".

Although the boss was lying to my face, they did work pretty hard for about 4 days and it's a pretty decent job. They mentioned they won't get paid until the broker gets paid. Gutters aside, I decided to tip them each 60$ which seemed to smooth things over somewhat. The broker will be here next week to take a look at the gutters.

 

[PugetDude]

Just finished getting our house painted by the local village idiot masquerading as a painting contractor.

We were "first on the list" for Spring after he "overbooked" last fall.
When we got back from AZ, we went from "first on the list" to "next on the list" to " the next exterior" to the "next power wash"

The 17 year old kid he sent over to do the power washing was less than impressive, but did really seem to enjoy playing with the machine...

A week later his "crew" showed up to paint. Two days, the house was looking pretty good at 35 mph from the street. . Had a few spots that needed touch up, exterior doors still needed painting. He promised that he would personally come by the next day to finish it up, and could he get paid so he could "pay his crew?" Apparently I was runner-up for the village idiot position, because I paid him 90% of the bill, holding out a few hundred until the job was completed. Two weeks later the paint is already peeling off the wooden garage doors...

Two months, 30+ excuses, and his truck parked in his driveway every day after 2:30 PM (my neighbors all delighted in giving me updates on his whereabouts)later, he sends his kid back to finish the job. With an attitude, a 4" brush for the flat doors, and a bill for an additional $225 to complete the job. He apparently hadfired his entire "crew" and was down to just him and his kid, aka the village idiot-to-be-in-training.

The "touch up" took three days, spread out over two weeks, including re-painting the entire north end of the house, hours of sanding/filling and repainting the garage doors, and me agreeing to split the $225 with him to get it finished. All the while he was bitching about how he underbid the job and was completely upside down on the labor (we paid Sherwin Williams direct for the paint), etc...and, BTW, he was not the low bidder.

It's finally done, looks good, but he turned a simple paint job into a two month ordeal and lost any chance of painting any of our neighbor's houses.

 

[ffemtdisp]

My wife and her family have an almost genetic gift when it comes to paint & painting. The family ran a paint & wallpaper store for nearly 60 years. My father in law was the heir apparent to the store when it was destroyed in a flood. He is one of the best painters around, but he 'loves' <sarcasm> painting so much, he happily drove a tractor-trailer for 40 years....

 

[Justanoldguy]

I'm not sure why most painters are drunks,.

Maybe the ones you see but it sure isn't my experience and I spent nearly 50 years in the building trade.

 

[LS6 Tommy]

Kind of off topic, but the OP's house looks like Hardieplank. I thought that had a lifetime finish that didn't require painting?

Tommy

 

[Ron_CA]

Been through a bunch of painters myself. One time I asked a painter to use a Behr paint color that I got from a neighbor. Was mostly requesting Frazee at the time but just like this color. I specifically told the painter to not color match with another brand and to use Behr paint.

Well...he used Dunn Edwards and did a computer color match and the house came out looking olive drab like a military vehicle. Ugly...He said it looked perfect but when I held the much golder color swatch up to the siding he agreed it was off and would repaint. I was flipping the house anyway so told him if it sold, no harm no foul but if one person said anything about the paint he would be repainting. House sold in a week.

 

[Outlander]

Had my roof & soffits done last year. I decided to hold off on the gutters for another time. Roofing guy missed that detail and brought in a subcontractor. I arrived home and thought my wife had changed her mind about the gutters because we had them! After a couple of calls they admitted they made a mistake. What to do? We offered to pay 50% in 3 installments (I figured that would cover materials at least), they guy almost offered me his firstborn. I guess he realised the options were to remove unwanted gutters or give them to me for free.

As for the soffits, they were in bad shape following a fire where the siding contractor never finished the work. In fact he showed up at -15* C to do caulking (which I found super odd).

All's well that ends well, I guess.

 

[58Yeoman]

Six years ago, a dead tree fell on our house. Insurance had a company come out to repair it all; one side of the roof, soffitt, facia and gutters on one side (hip roof). My wife was still working from home at the time, and took a walk out to see how they were doing. The sub contractor had taken off all the gutters and was installing seamless all around. She told him that he was supposed to only do the front. Oh well...he said you got free gutters all around, then. Did a good job despite losing money on the job.

 

[Zeke]

I was a union painter and then started my own business. This was back in the 70's when there was still some pride in workmanship and character. I had lots of work and made good money. I had a crew of 3 plus myself. 2 of the guys were into music and the 3rd was a wannabe football coach. Pretty well rounded out lot.

I've seen all the horror stories you can dream up. I've seen the drinking and drugs. The one thing about painting that sets it apart from most of the trades is that at one time or another every single person has picked up a paint brush and done some painting. And some quite a bit more and some are quite good at it.

It's not easy being a painter but it's easy to grab a brush and start painting. You've got amateurs on both sides of the issue. I lasted 10 years total before moving forward and getting a general contractor's license. I still paint, am painting this week, but I won't hire a painter. There's none left.

 

[Tucko]

I don't have anything add about your situation but painting a house by yourself with a 4" brush would ****.

I did it to my house. I actually liked it better than spraying. Uses less paint, less cleanup and taping, etc...