Winning Colors Painting

Description of Work: Inside and outside home repairs and painting

Description of Work: Scrape, prep and prime & paint front, air wells, and back of 4 unit bldg, which had not been painted in 20 yrs

Description of Work: The existing paint was stripped from the front and part of one side of the house, the front, back and partial sides were painted. Subcontactors replaces deyrotted, weather damaged and unattractive wood (tilted over time). Subcontractors created new gingerbread for house. Subcontractors installed new gingerbread on house. Subcontractors painted new gingerbread on house. Subcontractors fabricated and installed copper flashing and window/door protective ledges. You will notice the work subcontractor used a LOT in this description - this was probably our major issue with this company - bills were presented after work was completed- but not authorized. Items that we felt could have reasonably been considered as part of the origional estimate magically morphed into additional work costings thousands of dollars, the sides of the house were not included in the estimate - I can understand us missing it but the owner of the company should never have made that mistabke - another $2k ommission that got billed to us seperately. The results are great looking, we are getting lots of compliments and they were the only company we would find that was willing to strip the existing paint (plasticized marine paint) - all very good points and they did an excellant job. Now on to the bad points: The gingerbread painting was included in the orgional contract - once the paint was removed the gingerbread basically vrumbled (100 year old plaster-yep I understand) - so Nita got an artist friend of hers to supply new gingerbread. The artist has an extensive website but it lacks measurements for many items - we asked Nita to have the artist select replacement gingerbread - a few weeks late5r I find our she has ordered the gingerbread WITHOUT showing us the choices. Turns out a couple of the choices were grossly incorrect for our house (an egyption cartouche as a center piece with all the rest being baraque period pieces. Turns out NITA selected the pieces herself- sigh. We spent a long evening correcting the choices to get what we wanted. I really did not think it was unreasonable to ask the artist to make recommendations, be told BEFORE the order was placed for review and to not have a house front that would have looked like a train wreck from the British museum. Now - we were charged hundred of dollars to have the new gingerbread mounted on the house (really? You would not have to have remouned the old stuffr?), we did agree to have an antique painting style applied rather than the old grteen/white combination - what we did NOT expect was yet another seperate bill for hundreds of dollars for the painting by another outside contractor. Oh - and we had to complain as the patching on the screw holes was OBVIOUS from street level to the causual observer - they corrected the patching and whiped out part of the expensive antique paiinting job. We got charged hundreds for the rental of the PortaLet - really - she could not have figured that out when bidding the house. Luckly I was between jobs for most of the 16 weeks it took to complete the job - estimate was 7 weeks. We ended up paying two additional months of scaffolding rental/permits as well. You have to watch Nita - she keeps making visual decisions for you - which is great if you want that kind of thing but we had, and communicated, very specific color choices (which she did not get right - the saturation on the darkest color was very low compared to the printed sample we gave her), the contract specified hat the colors would be applied as they existed when the project started - she did not paint the dentals in the dark color, she did not do the outlining of the panels in the dark accent color, and many other details were simply ignored - we noticed all this once she had removed the scaffolding - no pre check offered or final inspection provided while it could still hae been fixed. Finally we were suprised when told our front door would have to remain open ALL DAY and until midnight to be painted - for two days! This is endemic of her contant inability to tell us planned activities ahead of time, and as often as not the work was not preformed when she indicated but some random time laster - all without any notification sufficient to let you change plans. Yes - the result looks great but I feel if we had not constantly checked the work and had them correct issues it would have been very disapointing.