R&R Painting

We hired Rich to paint a good deal of our home. My wife found his website and reviews on a site called "CitySearch" that seemed to indicate a lot of happy clients. He assured us he had a competent crew and would repair all drywall issues before he painted. We should have known we made a mistake on his first day, when he produced a contract that required 50% down. Upon getting 50% down, he left to cash the check and didn't show up until the next day. The next day, he showed up by himself and spackled some of the walls; then left again after two hours. The next day he showed up for two more hours and left again, still having not painted a thing. The next day he called 15 minutes before his scheduled arrival time to indicate he had had a car accident. He told me he had rear ended a truck. However, he told one of his new employees that showed up the next business day with him that a disgruntled employee who had not been paid vandalized his truck with a baseball bat. Anyway, he showed up the next day with two workers and started to work. One of the workers was a college kid who had worked in a paint store but had no painting experience and an experienced painter (or so we were told). He set them to work on "dropping" our kitchen, as he was to paint the ceiling. Again, we were shortly thereafter given a real clue about Rich and unfortunately ignored it. The two workers started covering our cabinets with plastic. About half way through, Rich saw what they were doing and told them to stop. He went on a rant, not realizing I could hear him, about how unnecessary it was to cover our laminate cabinets, as we could wipe off any drips. He further indicated that drips on cabinets was the kind of thing "I don't come back for". I should have fired him right then and there. But, unfortunately, I didn't. After a day of painting on day 1, Rich left our living room in a shambles, covered with drop clothes, furniture in the center of the room, etc. Our kitchen was COVERED in gritty dust (from his ancient and filthy drop cloths, I realized later) and my wife and I spent much of the night cleaning up the kitchen. Unfortunately, that night, we did not get up and look at the top of the cabinets or we would have realized the SIGNIFICANT amount of overspray from the paint job (done by Rich himself). Worse still, that night we found a big ball of putty between our dogs paws. She was eating it. It turns out that Rich left it out; fortunately, it did not cause a blockage. Again, I should have fired him then, but didn't. Next day, after getting the workers started, Rich said he had to leave and was gone almost the entire day. Turns out he went to Philadelphia (one hour away) to bid on a job. When he got back, he rolled out the ceiling in our bedroom, with the college kid assisting him. That night, we found a soaking wet rag on our wooden armoire in the bedroom causing irreparable damage to the wood. The next day I confronted Rich about the armoire. He blamed his green assistant (chewed him out in front of me) and indicated that he could fix it. It was at this point that I asked him about his insurance; he claimed to have a 2 million dollar policy but assured me he could fix the armoire. This day, he rolled the ceiling of my study. That night, I again had a mountain of dust and grit to clean up in the study. And, there was a shoe print and scratches on my wooden desk. I confronted Rich about this the following day and he denied standing on the desk (but one of his workers saw him do it and told me). Again, I stupidly didn't fire him. After confronting him, Rich again disappeared for most of the day. The next day, Rich started working in our family room which has very high ceilings. He rolled the ceiling from the floor with a super long pole. We later realized that he hadn't cut the walls before he rolled. He got overspray on all the walls, overspray on the top of our ceiling fan, on the back of our sectional sofa, on furniture and more. But since the room wasn't finished, he left the drop cloths out and everything was covered, so most of the damage was not yet seen. The next day, I went to work (first time since he started) and my wife stayed with Rich. Upon his arrival, she realized that a very large painting in our living room had been damaged because someone had propped a heavy mirror up against the canvass of the painting. At this point, my wife had also noticed many problems and she fired Rich. As he was on his way out, however, she had second thoughts (because we had paid over $2000 to him) and she decided to give him one more chance. This was the really big mistake. The house was in a shambles and our kids were home, so she took them out for the day with very specific instructions on what was to be done and what was not. Rich was to work on finishing the family room and our Master Bathroom. When she got back, everything was 200% worse. A new worker, with no experience at all, had been given the job of painting the bathroom from the ground up. The job was AWFUL. Meanwhile, Rich did the family room walls, again with no cuts or drywall prep, and again the job was awful. Someone had done the ceiling in our hall bath but had not taped the walls, apparently forgetting we were not planning on doing the walls (now we have to). There was paint all over our rugs in the family room. Our bathroom lighting fixture was ruined by paint. (we got the paint off but also took off the finish). There was overspray everywhere. In the bathroom, someone used a ladder in the fiberglass tub and gouged/scratched it beyond repair. Paint was lodged in our grout, our tile was scratched (and filthy of course), the shower base was scratched, the shower glass was scratched, our marble vanities were scratched. My wife took in all of this and told Rich to leave. He indicated that he'd be happy to once he got his check for the balance. My wife told him he wouldn't get another dime. At this point, Rich got angry, grabbed his 14 foot ladder and deliberately swung it against the ceiling fan in the family room and then knocking over a lamp in the living room; my wife started fighting him on the other end of the ladder, and his worker assisted her while yelling at him to stop. My wife grabbed the phone and told him leave without further damage or she'd call 911. That stopped him and he left, but not before he walked out with MY 6 foot ladder (my wife was witness to this). We also found several cans of expensive paint that we bought missing. We found out from one of his workers that a can of paint from when our house was built, semi-gloss for the trim, was switched out with inferior (non semi-gloss) paint and that worker was instructed to use that non-matching paint to paint the crown molding in my study. Later, we found jewelry, prescription medicine and several other items mysteriously missing. The jewelry was in our master bedroom closet and there was paint found in that closet on the rug, against the walls, on shoes, on clothes even though there was no painting to be done in that closet! The extent of the damage we found as we cleaned up was so extensive we had to file a claim on our homeowners insurance. Every wall in the house, including the many walls that we did not need to paint, now need to be painted because of overspray. Worse, Rich's behavior upon exit caused trauma to my wife and kids. We did call the police about the missing items. The sad thing is that I have only just provided in this report a fraction of the many things Rich damaged and/or did improperly. All I can say is that it's buyer beware with this person. We later realized that the reviews on citysearch were bogus (except for ours). When his worker wrote a review, "someone" commented indicating that the worker was responsible for all that went wrong, claiming to be my wife (even signing with her initials) and indicating that Rich finished the job with quality! DON"T hire Rich for ANYTHING.