C & L Affordable Painting & Drywall

The painter crew showed up at the time we were told, and got to work promptly. From the start, we noticed problems - faceplates for light switches and plug outlets were not removed, they tried to paint around them, with the result that many of the plates (fortunately cheap plastic ones which we intended to replace) had streaks of paint on them, and that you could tell on close inspection that the old color was visible under the plates. Also, at one point one of the painters painted around the custom fitted blinds in the bedrooms, getting some paint on the tops of the blinds. Additionally, when the trim was done, no taping was done at all. When I asked Charles Lum, the business owner, about the above problems, he did remove plates, blinds, etc. but seemed surprised that we wanted the plates removed, and basically blamed his employee for not removing the blinds. As far as taping to paint the trim, he claimed that good painters could freehand the trim, and get very little paint on floors,etc., which in fact they did, but after they left, there were places that had faint paint spots that had not been cleaned up. I can't help but feel that would have been avoided had they taped. The real red flag on this guy, and why I fired him after the interior, is that he tried to charge about $400 over the bid, claiming that doing the trim for the interior was not included in the original bid. Aside from the fact that that kind of assertion seems totally ridiculous (I mean, who paints their interior and not the trim around windows, doors, and baseboard, which is all he did), he knew we wanted the trim done when we picked out the interior colors, said nothing about changing the bid or the bid not including the trim, and then effectively tried to charge extra later without addressing this up front. He also tried to blame my wife, by saying that she had wanted the trim done (true), but never discussed any extra cost for this. I consider this type of behavior in contractors totally unacceptable.