Pima Decorating

I hired Larry to complete baseboard replacement and interior painting. The quality of the work was extremely unsatisfactory. Larry left the job incomplete and damaged my home. A 2 week job took over 2 months to complete. He only worked on the job a few short days each week. Larry damaged my sons special sailboat bed, and attempted to glue it so I wouldn’t notice. When I asked he only admitted to one area and would get screws to fix it. The bed is still broken. He broke my tile in 3 places during baseboard removal, and didn’t inform me until I pointed it out. Larry did not replace the tiles, but filled them with a mismatched grout. Larry damaged my door trim and again only filled the cracks. He left large gaps between my new baseboards and the tile, and gaps between baseboards and walls. He did not want to properly complete the install to remedy the gaps. Charged me more to caulk them, and did not fill them all, even after I pointed them out several times. The spaces leave room for pests, leaks, dust, etc. He left nail holes in the baseboards and obvious seams. The paint is very streaky with visible brush strokes. I am unsatisfied with the awful paint lines on my walls, visible drips on doors, streaks, splatter on my surfaces, and poor coverage in many areas. I labeled all these concerns, and they still were not done when he left my house for his final touch ups. Larry failed to provide me any refund or send anyone to fix my concerns. I am generally not hard to please, but saved a lot of money for a home improvement project to turn out bad

You get what you pay for. I hired Pima Decorating based on my previous experience with them. True, they had punctuality problems the first time but this time was compounded by miscommunication as well. I was having two tenants move into separate units (rooms ) in the same house. I hired Larry and his son, Joe, to patch holes in the walls, re-texture and paint the entire walls. These walls had lots of areas where previous owners had smeared spackle 3-5 inches wide then painted over it. It clashed with the standard eggshell texture around it. One of the rooms has a small bathroom connected to it. The floor has slate looking ceramic tile. The baseboards near the shower were made of compressed plywood and were becoming damaged from water spraying from the shower. I wanted Larry to replace the baseboard with a rubber baseboard. Larry suggested that if I had any extra tile (yes) he could make baseboards out of the tile all around the tiny bathroom. He would only charge me $25- a fantastic price. Larry and Joe were available to get started right away, as they knew my tenants were moving in within a week. Larry gave me a schedule based on what his thoughts were at the time. As the client I re-arranged my schedule so that it matched his. Unfortunately, Larry could not remember what he told me originally and made up his own schedule. Then became irritated when I became irritated that he wasn't on time, and made me late for my schedule. I had explained to Larry that one tenant was moving in on Saturday and the other on Monday. Larry was done with one room by Friday morning. On Saturday Larry came early in the morning to work on the second room. I wasn't home but left a key for him (he is honest and trustworthy). Larry met the first tenant who told him that the second tenant was moving in that day (Saturday) I don't know why the first tenant said that, but it was a mistake. But Larry then left. He didn't call me to ask what was going on he just left. I was p*****. And I couldn't get in touch with him until late that afternoon. Larry came very late on Saturday to begin work in the second room and acted like it was my fault for the miscommunication. I explained that the first tenant was not setting the schedule, and reminded Larry that I was hiring him and no one else. If there were any questions or confusions he could just call me. What the ?? I had promised the tenants that their rooms would be complete by a certain date but Larry was making it difficult for me to keep my commitments. So that was the scheduling issue. The other issue is craftsmanship. Joe, the son, had done all the texturing and painting on the previous job. I was very pleased and impressed with his work. The father, Larry did the work this time and did not have as high of standards. When I explained what I was looking for (to make the texture even on the walls) he charged me an extra $100. I still felt it was a fair price so I paid him ahead of time. My bad. Larry overlooked numerous 3-5 inch wide texture issues in the wall. He balked when I pointed these out. He told me, as if it was my gross oversight, that it would have been easier if he just sealed the room up and sprayed texture over everything instead of trying to spot do it. My thought was, "So why didn't you do that in the first place and why are you suggesting that it is my fault for not knowing how to do your job" Larry did not start on the tiling work until after the tenants moved in. After a few days and the grout was installed, I inspected his work. The tiles were not set flat against the wall. This made a huge gap of grout between the tile and the wall. This grout line was 3 times the width of the grout lines on the floor, so it looks bad. He also did not cut the tiles so that the top and bottom were not parallel to each other. This made it look like the baseboards were diagonal. I wrote Larry an email asking him to correct the issue. He decided to refund me $150.00. I still l paid $350 total in the end because his original price was $500 for the entire job. Looking back, the original price was way too high, the workmanship was awful. Larry was difficult to deal with. I'll never hire them again.

Larry Bonning and his son, Joe are very kind, trustworthy people. They can be trusted to do a good job, be forthright in thier workmanship and dealings with the customer. They can work on thier own quietly. At times, especailly on long projects, they may arrive much later than they say they will. It's not always easy to get in touch with them, but in general they will call you back. I wish they would have been more diligent about writing estimates down and offering paper receipts.