Raven's Eye Painting

Things started smoothly, with Mike and another painter coming to work on the first day. The second day, Mike was alone and he didn't finish the job. He had to come back for a third day, and was alone then as well. This wasn't a problem for us, as we had no strict timetable, but it is something to keep in mind if you need a job done by the date given when you hire them. When he finished, the 10-foot-view of everything looked fine. But it was on closer inspection that everything fell apart. While they had used drop clothes, there were large spatters of paint all over our carpet and hardwood floors. Everywhere. They did not tape off any window or door frames. There were large streaks of paint on many of them. They did not tape off baseboards. There were streaks of paint all over many of them, some of them quite large. There were spatters of paint on the railing for our stairs. He removed one of the rails for our stairs and then couldn't get it back on, and I had to attach it after he stripped the screw. A lighter color, perhaps representing about 60% of the job, was only put down in one coat despite the estimate being for at least two coats of paint for the entire job. From about 4 feet or closer, it was obvious the prior wall color was showing through in many areas with this color. Many of the areas around frames and baseboards in all new colors, light or dark, were thin, with obvious brush streaks and the prior wall color showing through. There were areas of several walls left unpainted, including slightly hidden areas behind furniture and curtains which I would not have noticed unless I moved them to inspect things. There were borders where two paint colors met that were not even close to straight lines. To his credit, he did go back and do another entire coat of the one color, and he touched up most of the other problem areas. He also offered to come back and do any other touch up as needed for free if we found more problems. However, the biggest issue has been the many areas with paint on the carpet and wood that were not cleaned up. I pointed these out to him, but they remained. Two weeks later, and my wife and I are still finding new areas of our house with splotches of paint on wood or carpet we didn't notice before. At this point I wouldn't trust him to come back and fix it. The bottom line is Mike is a really nice guy. The paint on the walls does generally look nice. And he certainly worked hard to fix all the problems I found when he thought he was done, especially since he was working alone. But the work wasn't finished on time or with enough care for our house. And if I hadn't thoroughly inspected things before he left, what he presented as a and quot;finished joband quot; was anything but. Frankly, before he fixed all the problems I found, my wife and I had done a better job protecting the baseboards and frames, putting down enough paint, and getting clean lines when we painted our living room and kitchen ourselves. If he hadn't worked so hard to quickly and accurately fix all the issues, he would have likely gotten an and quot;Fand quot; rating from me as I don't pay someone almost $1000 for work I could have done better in several days on my own. As it is, he has damaged wood and carpet in most of our home. I can't in good conscience recommend him for interior work to anyone else, unless you're willing to watch over him the entire time, make sure he protects all your baseboards and framing with tape, actually uses his drop cloth properly, and actually does the proper number of coats of paint. If you're willing to do all that, then his lower price is probably worth it.

This job involved painting old wood paneling, so Michael did extra prep including caulking some gaps. He also spent an extra hour or two after the fact, painting some trim work I decided to include at the last minute. He always wants the customer to be happy with the results. Michael is a great example of what customer service should be. He returns calls promptly, arrives on time or calls to let you know if there's a delay, and gets the job the done in an efficient, professional manner. We are comfortable giving him a key to work while we're away. His rates are very reasonable.

Great