A Touch Of Paint

Terry LeMaire dba A touch of Paint is a con artist. We contacted him for an estimate, he immediately came over to prepare an estimate. The price was acceptable. When it came time for them to show up as he had committed, he didn't show up until 2 days later. When he did arrive he showed up 3 hours late without notifying us. This became a recurring theme with a whole list of excuses each time. The demolition was awful! They did not put plastic up, dust was everywhere. They dumped the tile in our trash can and the garbage men would not take it. The tile installation was beyond awful, it was the most pitiful installation possible. The floor was not leveled, the tile gaps were extremely uneven, the tiles were not level. He even started the tile on each side of the room and attempted to meet in the middle. WE HAD CUT TILE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROOM!!!!! Who does that? He even used wall mastic for the tile installation! We also had mastic all of the baseboards, door frames and appliances. It took him a week to do half of a job that should have taken two days to complete. Once he got through half of the room, we finally saw his work. My wife started crying. He was fired immediately. I demanded our $2,900 back, he said that he had to talk to the business owners to get approval. THAT WAS A LIE, he is the owner. He then said he would refund $750, again nothing happened. I contacted him and demanded the full amount back, he finally agreed. After that he does not respond to repeated calls and texts. I would not trust Terry LeMaire DBA a Touch of Paint to empty a cat box. He is a liar and crook! Avoid him at all costs!

For those who are not interested in reading details, I will summarize my review: Terry LeMaire, owner of A Touch of Paint, is without a doubt the most UNPROFESSIONAL, UNRELIABLE, UNETHICAL and DISHONEST "contractor" I have ever had the misery of dealing with. His pleasant demeanor and "Christian beliefs" would put most con-men to shame. We interviewed Terry Lemaire d/b/a A Touch of Paint to paint the exterior of our house. When bidding for the project, Terry went into great detail as to how he and "his crew" would first powerwash the house, scrape all old flaking paint off, caulk and seal all cracks, and locate all areas of rotted wood so that these areas could be replaced before painting (at an additional cost.) Terry stated that the work should be completed in 5 days (excluding rain delays, obviously.) In my line of work, I have become very familiar with how house exteriors should be prepped and painted, and Terry seemed knowledgeable and experienced. We hired him and immediately paid 1/2 of the charges up front. Then the problems started: Terry and/or his "crew" NEVER showed up when they said they would, IF THEY SHOWED UP AT ALL. Terry would tell me to my face that he and "his guys" would show up at 8:30 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. "tomorrow." If anyone showed up at all, it was usually between 11:30 a.m. and 2:30 in the afternoon. To make matters worse, Terry and/or his crew would typically "work" only 2 to 3 hours on the days they bothered to show up at all. When I texted Terry to find out why he was not on the job, I would get every excuse in the book. The following are just a few: He had to take his wife to the hospital. He had to take one of his kids to the hospital. He was driving himself to the hospital (for diarrhea.) His truck broke down (this excuse was used twice). He had to get more paint. He had two hernias that were bothering him. It was probably going to rain the next day so it made no sense for him to work today(!) He had to drop off/pick up the kids from school. He had to eat lunch with his daughter for her birthday. He had to get his daughter's birthday present for her party the next day. At the beginning of this experience from ****, Terry's "crew" (without Terry, of course) showed up for three whole days in a row and worked a total of about 7 hours over the entire 3 day period. (That 7 hour total includes the cigarette breaks they took every 20 minutes, the time outs to lie down on the front lawn and chew the fat, and lunch breaks.) This crew could care less how they worked. Other than some cursory powerwashing of the house, they did absolutely no other prep work. No scraping of chipped and peeling paint, no taping off of windows and French doors, no caulking of cracks. I complained to Terry that his crew didn't know what they heck they were doing, and he assured me that he would show up to supervise them. He never did. On the third day, Terry announced that they were finished and demanded payment of the remaining balance. I showed Terry where the crew had painted directly over peeling paint and over areas of obvious wood rot. They had painted only the thresholds on the three sets of my front porch French doors and nothing else. They had not painted any of the gutter downspouts, nor had they painted any of the upstairs deck area. They failed to caulk a single opening in facia boards or window frames. If they painted a window at all, they painted the frame only half way up. In other words, the paint job could have been done by blind, mentally challenged raccoons and it still would have turned out better. Additionally, part of the job Terry was paid for was to prep and paint one interior plantation shutter. (I would have done it myself except I don't own a paint sprayer.) Although his crew "painted" the shutter, they did not sand or prime the shutter beforehand. Because the shutter was originally wood stained with an oil based coating and the paint applied by the crew was water based enamel, the paint on the shutter peeled off in strips. Notwithstanding my pointing out these items to Terry, Terry insisted that I pay him the remaining balance and we ended up having a shouting match on my front lawn in front of the neighbors. Terry loudly threatened to sue me and had his crew pick up all their equipment. I still refused to pay because the work was not completed, and what work was done was not done in a workmanlike manner. After a couple of days of silence, Terry texted back that he had fired his crew and that he would be back out the next day to "square up and get everything done." Gee, the next day, his "truck broke down" and he didn't show until I told him that I was firing him. He begged for another chance, and like an idiot, I gave it to him. From that point forward, it was just Terry, his mother and his mother's boyfriend who showed up to work. As usual, they would show up very late in the morning or in the early afternoon (if they showed at all) and would work 2 to 3 hours a day. After a couple of days of Terry, his mother and his mother's boyfriend working, Terry said he really needed money and asked for an additional $800.00 of the balance so that he could pay his mother and her boyfriend. Although they were still working sporadically on the job, they were doing a reasonably good job and so I paid the $800.00 as a sign of good faith. Terry's mom and her boyfriend worked a few more hours later the next week stripping the improperly painted plantation shutter, and Terry demanded via text the remaining $800.00 balance. At this time, the shutter was totally messed up with gunked up paint and stripper and Terry had not even painted the upper deck area. I told him "no" since if he was paid, he would never finish the shutter. He stated that if he didn't get paid, his children would starve! (He texted this even though he told me earlier that he had purchased a battery operated moped for his daughter's birthday!) I still refused because I knew that cleaning up the shutter that had been messed up by Terry's "crew" would be a major undertaking. Terry then started denying that doing the shutter was part of the job because it wasn't listed on the contract! (Once I initially got the written contract from Terry, I texted him to confirm that the interior plantation shutter was included as part of the job even though it wasn't listed. Terry texted back "yes, that includes everything.") I reminded him of his text, but he still insisted that the shutter wasn't included on the contract and so wasn't part of the job. Fortunately, I saved the text and after many more nasty texts, he finally agreed that he was going to paint the shutter. He picked up the shutter from my house and brought it to his "workshop." The next day, he texted me a picture of the painted shutter in his workshop. He came to the house and said he would bring the shutter by in a couple of hours, but could I please pay him the remaining balance since the banks were going to close soon. (It was on a Saturday morning.) I gave him the balance. When Terry finally delivered the shutter about 5:40 Saturday evening, the shutter was a mess. Almost half of the shutter louvers had been ripped from the control rod, and much of the shutter's "new" paint job was roughed up and covering what appeared to be left over stripped paint. When I pointed this out, Terry claimed he would come back the following Tuesday morning (October 16, 2018) to sand the shutter and repaint the louvers. It is now October 19th, and Terry has yet to show, but has texted that he can "pass by Saturday morning" (Oct. 20th) since he was "trading in his truck" today. I'm resigned to refinishing the shutter myself as well as painting the upstairs deck area. It has been nearly four weeks since Terry "started" this job, and notwithstanding Terry's claims of being a good Christian, he appears to have no clue how genuine Christians, let alone decent human beings, behave. P.S. I have attached a picture of the interior shutter as it now stands.