Atomic Painting

Atomic Painting provided a quote for $600 to paint the walls and trim of 3-4 rooms. The quote was for 2 coats of paint on the walls and 1 on the trim. They didn't apply 2 coats, and if they did they didn't do a good job of it. We spent another few hours the day after to touch up where they missed. There were many spots that they didn't cover very well. There are spots on the walls where they touched with the roller but didn't fix so now we have to sand it down and repaint the wall. After they left, and before we found all the quality issues, we had asked them to give us a quote for painting our kitchen and to repair a few gutters on our house. They said they would return the next day to give the quote. They never came back. Anyway, you get what you pay for. I am glad they didn't return to quote the other work. I would not recommend them.

Atomic Painting, a two-man father-son operation, was subcontracted by our contractor, Double D Construction, to fill in when the original subcontracted painter bailed out. The contractor, going off for a sudden week-long vacation in Costa Rica, left Atomic in charge not just of the painting, but of all the ceiling work we had hired Double D to do. We learned this on a Tuesday. That day, the duo managed about a 1/2 day of work, factoring in a 9:30 am start and a lunch break that included a trip to Home Depot to pick up supplies that took them 2 1/2 hours. They worked a full day Wednesday, rushing to get my home office finished (the contractor had promised it would be done two days earlier). The center foyer/stairwell got nearly all stripped and half-cleaned. In my home office it is clear that they sacrificed quality for speed. By choosing to spray-paint the walls, they not only missed spots but wasted a lot of paint. If the walls were skim coated at all, it was done badly. On one wall, tape ridges actually show through, there are paint and joint compound ridges, and many of the dings were not filled in. Elsewhere there were paint bubbles. Trim lines are sloppy in places. It is, in short, a hack job, and I will have to pay to get one wall redone properly. I was also not happy with the attitude of the son, Eric. He was careless, spilling, I think, DIF on the foyer carpet and ignoring it. When I pointed it out to him he was unapologetic. Even his father, Brian,had a cavalier, la-di-da attitude about it when I pointed it out to him. I ended up cleaning it up myself. I also had to go around the floor in my office on my hands and knees cleaning up paint splatters from Brian's trim work. And when I caught Eric rinsing off rollers and brushes in my garden, he answered, ?So what? It?s water-based paint.? It took two tries to get him to understand that he should not do that. Again, unapologetic ? and frankly disrespectful to a 65-year-old woman and a customer. We knew they couldn?t come the next day, a Thursday, but expected them on Friday. When I called Brian (the dad) at 9:30 am to find out why they hadn't shown up yet, he said he was on his way over (because he didn?t have our phone number and apparently doesn't know how to use a phone book) to let me know they couldn?t come that day, either. To be fair, he did offer to come the next day to work. I told him I would call him back. If the quality of the work and the cleanup, and the attitude had been better, we might have cut them some slack on the scheduling since, after all, they were brought in at the last moment. If their scheduling had been tighter, we might have been able to work out the quality issues with them. But with none of these aspects up to snuff, we decided to fire them. I called Brian back that same Friday and told him to come clean out their things.