Duracoat Painting

Summary: Extreamly bad work, unreliable, not trustworthy. Don't waste your time with these guys. Good: Not much to say here. Bad Very lousy work They hired a contractor who was NOT qualified to do the job Poor communication Their contractors caused property damage It took about 3 weeks for the job that they originally said would complete in 3-4 days. Their contractor took stuff from our home (house number in our case) and the manager (Cameron Leonard) failed to pay bak or replace it even months after the work despite of promise (even via email.) that he would get it done in couple of days. We talked to Cameron Leonard who was the contact point. He initially quoted that it would take 3-4 days for all the work. There was some carpentry work that needed to be done to fix up some loose panels on the columns in the front of garage. He said that he would have a carpenter fix that and he would charge on hourly basis ($65) and estimated that it could take 2-4 hours. We agreed and after couple of days a contractor named Terry Runyan showed up and started to work on the carpentry work. Apparently he was also supposed to be working on the paint and prep work as well. In talking to him we found that he was a sub contractor doing bunch of work here and there and wasn't really a carpenter or even a full time painter. Since we were paying for the carpentry work on hourly basis we asked him to let us know when he started and finished so we know the exactly the number of hours spent on that work. He said it would take couple of hours but took about 4 hours to finish. (This was falsly reported as 5 hrs and we later confronted Cameron and he agreed that this work should no have taken this much time and reduce the hours) The work included replacing 3 small planks and he had to get the planks from home depot which was in 5-8 mins driving from my home. We checked the work and were immedietly able to figure out he was not really a carpenter. The 3 old planks were removed and new ones were nailed in. The edges and nails were sticking out, were not sanded to match with existing old planks and there were huge gaps between the planks and the column. Anyone could have done it within an hour at the most. When we asked him to fix it, he will take care of it soon. He was in general too talkative and sometimes would ask for Coffee etc. We found it very odd. Before he started working on the house we had stressed that we needed the caulking to be done well and also needed the underside of the sidings to be properly coated. We had mentioned this to Cameron as well. He then started to work on caulking the trim and masking windows but was more often interested in talking then working and he would ask things like if any of neighbours needed painting or other work etc. In the process be was very careless and broke plants from our garden. We told him to be careful and he would say he would and then again would break some more. This went on couple of times. The work was slow. There was one more guy who showed up part time as well who was working on the trims. Then started spary painting the exterior and after a day and a half he was done with the most part. But when I started checking, I found that NO CAULKING was done on the sidings where it needed. He had only caluked the trim in front of the house. This was pretty bad and we could see cracks all over (since we chose dark color this time it was easy to see). Underside of the sidings were not covered and the paint was too light in so many places. I talked to him about it and asked him to make sure to caulk again but he would only do it in one or two spots when I was around and then just would say I will take care of it. I let Cameron know and he assured he would take care of it. We had plans for the July 4th weekend and we asked them if they are working on the weekend and he said they would work on Friday and through the weekend and finish the work. So, we cancelled our plans for the weekend. However no one showed up from Friday-Monday and Cameron did not pick up the phone. We were upset as no work was done but we had to cancel our trip. Also as most of the windows were covered in plastic (for masking) it was too hot inside the house. having a 2 yr old child in the home it was very inconvenient. On Tuesday Terry showed up late and was rude to my wife and asked her why we complained to Cameron. We did not like his atttude and immedietly called Cameron and asked to replace him. The work was stalled for the most part as one guy was only showing up part time to work on the Trim. After few days of consistent pursuing, Cameron sent a guy to paint. We were very careful this time and made sure do a walk through again with Cameron and the new painter and found that Terry had done an extreamly poor coverage with no caulking and we asked them to repaint some sides of the house completely. After a week of work and very careful monitoring by us, some more caulking, the painting was done but there are still many spots where the painting was missed - even after final walkthrough and fixing many issues. We could only find so many given the time. We also realized that the fired contractor had taken our house number with him and Cameron assured he will replace it. We paid him anyways but he never showed up again. When we communicated via email he asked us to install it ourselves and he will send me the money in check - as guessed this never happened. The money wasn't much but this proved these guys cannot be trusted for anything. We are in the process of filing a complaint with BBB - just to make our point. I would recommened to stay far far away from this company. It was the worst experience we have ever had with contractors ever.