Rick's Custom Painting

First we needed existing cabinets and carpet in master dressing area removed so it could be made into a laundry room. We wanted the runner carpeting left on our staircases during construction to protect the hardwood underneath, until the upstairs projects were completed. It appeared that demolition was going smoothly. When I returned home (it was a Friday afternoon) I was shocked and sickened to see that Rick had left for the day after he had had his son and his son's friend pull all of the carpeting off of the front and back staircases, leaving all of the dirt and protruding staples and carpet tacks left in the stairs! My husband, 3 sons, and I worked for hours, until our hands were blistered from the pliers, pulling out staples just so we could use our stairs, without impaling our feet, for the weekend. We should have fired him then; however, most regrettably, we thought we'd give him another chance. It only got worse. Rick sells himself as a painter. Prep work is the key to painting. His spackle work looked like a child using play dough. Drywall and skim-coating was even worse. He built a wall and we ordered custom bi-fold doors for the opening. He installed bi-folds with a full inch gap in between the doors and a 1/2" gap on each end. When we said it wasn't acceptable it took him 2 more tries of moving the door molding in, only to never actually finish repairing the walls afterward. I spent a week sanding, painting, and fixing up his mess. We purchased a full piece of berber carpeting for the cedar closet. All he had to do was trim it to size and glue it down. He cut it in half and turned one end so the nap is going in the opposite direction! The only thing he got right was installing the pre-finished hardwood floor. He consistently and excessively over ordered supplies, which I always picked up for him. I bought sheets of birch for nice shelving/cabinets in laundry room. I've never seen anyone waste so much wood. Rather than measuring and planning cuts, he usually cut from a fresh sheet and wasted the rest of the board. He used shredded, splintered plywood for inside backs of the shelves, so towels get snagged. And, still we had full sheets of birch and wall board left in the garage! He just doesn't think things through. We needed to have a new clay-fired farmhouse sink set in place in the kitchen so the granite guys could template. We come home Friday night to find our $1500. sink was in place but it was cracked from the top lip all the way down to the bottom of the bowl! Rick acted as though he never noticed this 9" crack. We had an existing double oven cabinet in the kitchen. To accommodate the new double ovens, the inside edge of the cabinet trim had to be shaved down 1/4"' on each side. This was a 1/2" deep piece of cherry trim. Knowing the day before that ovens were a priority, Rick came the next morning and started on the trim at 7. When I got home at 4:30 he was still sitting in front of the oven cabinet using a dremel saw and had crooked, wavy cuts and gouges in the trim piece. He said he had been working on it all day and that the cherry wood was so tough he couldn't cut properly. I asked why he didn't use a belt sander. He said he didn't think to bring his. At 5 PM I drove to Wehrung's and rented a belt sander. By 7 PM the ovens were in. An entire day wasted. That weeked Rick said he fell off a 4' ladder at his home and had internal bruising. We didn't see him again, except for the following week, when he was on the cover of the Bucks County Herald playing guitar with his band. We had to call him for two weeks to pick up his tools. Several weeks have gone by and several thousand dollars have been spent repairing Ricks messes and finishing everything he started. Like the LIVE 220 amp electrical line he left hanging from the basement ceiling, the LIVE wire he left hanging in the old laundry room, the refrigerator outlet that he put on a GFI (our new, licensed, electrician said there was no way the person who worked in our house could have been a licensed electrician) the leaks in the plumbing he installed, re-installing the Viking cook-top and downdraft because it wasn't done according to manufacturers directions, having to reconfigure the blower motor because he didn't read the directions, having the cabinets he moved realigned because they had spaces in between. Rick didn't finish a single project on our job. Almost everything he did turned out to be a mess. Even in the cedar closet when cutting the top of a brand new solid wood door, he took a 2" gouge of wood out of it, didn't bother to repair it and never put the door knob on. He cut in to wood molding rather than move the electrical outlet. We can't even put a switch plate on it. We made a huge mistake hiring Rick Stallard and an even bigger mistake not firing him sooner. We kept thinking that it would get better, and we were afraid to switch contractors in the middle of a job. We had to reschedule our granite installation 3 times, delaying it 8 weeks. Rick sells himself as a painter and cabinet maker, showing pictures of himself working on a famous fine-woodworkers/artist's house. He must have been mowing the lawn there because the work he did here was no where near fine carpentry!

Learn from my mistake-do not hire this guy to work on your home.