Eye Candy Interiors

We were hesitant to use a color consultant for our kitchen re-do, because maybe they wouldn’t really listen or be patient with all the big & little decisions that needed to be made. They might just push their own agenda and be gone. Diane at EyeCandy is like a breeze of fresh air coming in the door. She has a really honest and caring nature, and she’s a great listener – plus she’ll speak candidly about what she sees and feels -- which is a perfect combination for somebody you hire to help transform a living space. She’s got a lot of years of experience choosing color and materials and also DOING the painting, tile setting, stone and other work, so she grasps pretty quickly what is practical to do and what will make a big visual difference. When it’s time to decide what will happen when and who will do what, Diane is (again) really clear about timing and costs. She’s just got a no-nonsense style wrapped in a smart, warm presence. She’s a great resource -- not just for paint colors and finishes, but all the elements that go into a room, like the floor surfaces, the lighting, textures – the whole package! Highly recommended.

She was wonderful to work with. She actually helped me choose colors and did a perfect job. She was a delight; I can't say enough good things about her. She wanted to make sure I was extremely happy, and I am.

Very responsive and professional. Good prep. work. Great attention to detail. Good communication skills.

This is the second time I've used Diane Kintrea of Eye Candy Interiors in less than 60 days. The result the first time was simply outstanding - as close to perfection as one can imagine. Given that Diane and her staff (her two grown children) are human, I thought it would be unfair to expect similar results on this project. I was wrong: the result was even better this time around. Working with Diane is very much a collaborative process. Though the thin veneer of bland paint on my bathroom walls was something I knew I wanted to replace, I had very little idea about the look I wanted. No problem! Diane and I reviewed a zillion paint chips, talked about options, and ended up experimenting with a quart of one color only to find that another color was much better. Diane is a true pleasure to work with, and I won't hesitate to use her a third time should I want to update colors in a different part of my home. She sets an incredibly high bar for other contractors to try to emulate.

A painter paints. Any high school kid can slap some paint on a wall. Diane Kintrea is an artist and a craftsman who happens to use paint as her medium. She singlehandedly took my bland 1800 square foot tract house in the suburbs and turned it into a beautiful home that will be a haven for years to come. She has an extraordinary eye for color and an inability to be satisfied with anything but a first rate result. After spending time watching her in action, one quickly takes the attributes desired in a contractor for granted: she is on time, works extremely hard, and is entirely trustworthy. Terrific. That?s not why I?m posting this review. I?m putting this submission on Angie?s List because I want to highlight three aspects of Diane?s work that made all the difference in the world to me. First, while some painters might suggest a color for this or that wall Diane ? who has an interior design background ? worked with me to choose colors that would enhance the tenor and mood of what will be my daily environment for years to come. I?m not just talking about pre-project; at one point in the middle of the project I had a frantic desire to turn to a deeper, darker color for my living room. Without being at all patronizing, Diane calmly discussed the consequences of such a switch, given lighting, the room?s size, and the like in a late night phone call. That crucial call saved me from myself, and the final result was exactly what I was looking for. Second, I?ve never seen a tradesperson take such ?ownership? of a project. When I came to the jobsite after work each night and shared a zillion different petty ?problems? Diane ? who had to have been exhausted ? replied to each with genuine concern, as though we were talking about her house ? not mine - and certainly not just ?another job.? Third, this is an individual who sets very high standards for herself. She is DETAIL oriented, down to the speck. On the very last day of a project in which she had been working 12 hour days she had, objectively speaking, about 5 hours of work left. She spent 8, on her own volition, because she insisted on going over her work with a fine tooth comb (and I am not talking about cleaning up after herself). I?ll repeat myself: this is a person ? almost unheard of in this day and age ? who is an artist and a craftsman. There is no possible way I could be more pleased with either the process or the result.

Diane came and did a great job - I couldn't be happier with how my house looks. I made an unfortunate color choice which was entirely my fault, but she helped me fix it and it looks amazing now! Very happy.

I learned when painting the interior of my house that you can hire a "painter" or an "artist". Painters come in and paint a room the color you want, Artists give you suggestions and treat the project like they are crafting a work of art. Diane who is the owner/painter at Eye Candy is an artist, who communicates well and paints with a passion. She gave me suggestions for the color of my livingroom wall and suppliers. At first, I didn't think the olive green she suggested was right, but when I put 5 test colors on the wall, it turned out her suggested color won. Althought Eye Candy's price was slightly higher than a few other bids ($350 + materials), I selected on quality not quantity, and enjoyed working with Diane. I will use her again.

I have used Diane in the past and again the job went very well, her design input is wonderful and both her and her daughter Morgan are a pleasure to have in the house. The colors were perfect and their work was very professional.

Diane was fantastic! First, she was able to start immediately which worked out perfectly for my tight schedule and offered color consulting. She did an amazing job helping me choose colors (the part I was most worried about) and they turned out beautifully. She completed the entire house in about 7 working days and I didn't even need to ask her to come back for touch-ups. The corners on the walls are rounded which made drawing lines between colors quite challenging, but they turned out perfectly! There were some minor wall repairs required as well and any I pointed out to her before hand she did a wonderful job repairing. My only very minor complaint would be a few areas that could have been repaired, but because I did not specifically call them out they were not done. This was most likely a communication error on my part.

Diane did an excellent job. She was very helpfull with the color and paint selection, which I do not have an eye for, but she has a great one. She was a pleasure to have in the house and did an great job with the painting. I have more painting to do upstairs and will definitly hire her again.

Diane did a fantastic job in our living room, bedroom, dining room & kitchen earlier in the year so we called her back to put some color in the rest of the house, which was all white. Our front room has an arched entry way and the drywall was badly damaged over the arch. Diane repaired the drywall, added texture, painted and it looks great! The design of our house presents some challenges but Diane had a positive, can-do attitude to all of them. She was also very helpful choosing the colors and we're very happy with the results. When Diane finished she assured us she wanted to be called back if we found any areas that needed attention. In the bright daylight we did find a spot that needed some touch-up and Morgan came back and took care of it, even going around to make sure there were no other areas of concern. These are great folks to do business with.

Diane was wonderful to work with, flexible and a good communicator. Her daughter Morgan helped on the first day with the prep work and she was also very competent and professional and a good communicater. This old 1911 house has many architectual issues, Diane suceeded in making it look great. I appreciated her flexibility in working with and around other contractors in the house at the same time. I look forward to hiring Diane for more painting projects in my home in the near future.

She did a good job for the most part. One the day work was to start, her daughter arrived first and demanded 50% up front before she would start. This was a new term that was not part of the bid or anything that was discussed beforehand.

Diane came over to view the area to be painted, took photos, and emailed a bid to us the following day. She was not intimidated by the challenging area in our living room, as another painter had been, but had a "can-do" attitude from the start. She helped us through our color selection for each room and we couldn't be happier with the colors she recommended. Diane, Morgan & Michael were very easy to work with, considerate of our needs, efficient, and cleaned up everything at the end of each day. The painting job is excellent quality and we are very satisfied with the results.

We had Diane give us an estimate for painting the entire apartment. She came the next day for the estimate and it was very comparable to others that we had gotten. We talked about color ideas, which I completely entrust to her. The apartment is a basement apartment that felt very cold as it had been previously painted. Diane suggested warming it up with some beautiful colors and she got started the next week. Also, Diane helped us with a solution to some water damage that was coming through a cement wall in the bedroom. She scraped the chipping paint and put a sealant on it prior to repainting. It looks like new. We also had her patch some cracks in the walls (as it is an old house). It was about a solid week of painting, but she finished when she said she would and the work was terrific. The apartment is VERY comfortable now and we've had alot of positive comments on the color selections throughout. We would hire Diane again in a heartbeat! She's honest, hardworking and shows up when she says she will and gets the job done beautifully!

Diane has an excellent eye for color and was very helpful with color selection. She wants to please and worked very hard to satisfy my desires. Overall the basic painting was done very well. My concerns were wall repairs including holes from picture frames, areas of irregular texture, and repair to a previously damaged wall. She did not cause any of these flaws but I had hoped that they would no longer be noticeable when everything was freshly painted.

Diane is Eye Candy Interiors and she is AMAZING. I think her business cards should read Master Paintress (and/or) ROCKSTAR Interior Artist. She truly is amazing. I had some colors in mind, and when Diane came to bid her proposal, she took the time to listen to what was locked in my mind's eye (and due to my lack of time/talent, would still be locked inside if it weren't for Diane!). She gave me some great ideas/suggestions that I never would have come up with on my own, but absolutely love! After I reviewed competitor bids, I chose Diane. I'm sure there are a lot of people who can put paint up on a wall and do a thorough job of it, but with Diane, it's much more than that. She has such good energy and she is totally committed to earning a happy customer. Because we had three rooms to paint, Diane came three days (one room/day) over the course of a few weeks. (More to accommodate my schedule than hers.) There were no major touch ups to speak of (other than a few that maybe my husband created when reassembling our kitchen!), but Diane was thorough in seeking them out and fixing them. She communicates simply and thoroughly, either via email or phone. When it made $$$ sense for me to use a coupon to purchase the paint myself, Diane clued me in on how/when/where to get those deals. She is a real find and I plan to save up more home improvement money to bring her back to do more in the remainder of our home. She's THAT good.

Diane contacted me right away and was able to come out the next day and give me a bid. Her price was fair considering the amount of work that was involved - it took 5 days to complete the job. She arrived around 9am each day and worked until 5 or so. She brought her daughter (who is an excellent painter as well) for 2 days. They were extremely respectful of my home and even were very quiet when my daughter was napping each day!! Diane suggested the ceiling color and it is stupendous - I don't think I would have had the foresight to pick this color. She also suggested we paint the interior of the bookcases which I hadn't even thought of and I am so glad we did - it really pulls the room together. I love what my home looks like now and I can honestly say that I used to be embarrassed to have people over but not anymore, There were a lot of touch ups to do in the end but I didn't mind doing them and she said she would come back and do them herself. It was my choice to do the touch ups myself. All in all I had a very good experience. We really enjoyed having Diane and her daughter in our house - good conversation, music and we missed her when she was done with the job.

Diane is AMAZING. This review is going to sound like we are friends, but I swear I never met her before calling her up for a bid from Angie's list a few weeks ago. I was impressed with Diane from the moment I talked with her originally on the phone. She happened to live in the neighborhood and offered to come over later that afternoon to give me a bid. She came to the house and walked through room by room with me, asking questions and taking detailed notes. One of the other contractors I had to walk through each room multiple times when we went through the bidding processing, which annoyed the h*** out of me, because I'd already done it with Diane and she was so efficient with her questions and note taking. I got three painting bids and if I put the other two bids on the low and high ends, Diane's came back on the medium-low side. It wasn't the lowest, but I really liked her as a person when I met her, and I also ran it through the internal filter of "you get what you pay for". I choose Diane, and wow, did I choose right. With her level of professionalism, the quality of her work, plus her color choosing talent, I feel like I got a lot more than I paid for. So after I choose her, she came back for another visit to the house to go through the color selection process. I wanted this to be the last time I painted before selling in a year or two, so I wanted to make sure it was something on the neutral side. I casually mentioned to her that I was thinking about painting a version of the tan that was already in one of the rooms. She listened and if I was insistent on that color, I'm sure she would have been happy to go with that color. But she showed up with a whole armful of color selection palettes -- not just one little wheel, but like 6 or 7 different big stacks of color choices. On the way into the house, Diane noticed a mushroom growing on the old plum tree in my front yard that was a stunning orange color. She commented on how beautiful it was, and said we should use that color somewhere if we could. My yard is all perennials without lawn, so I'm way into the "organic theme". I LOVED the idea of using this orange somewhere and we ended up using it for the external door color on all 3 of the doors. Around the outside of the front door we painted a color called "Jalepeno" and for the inside of the house, we picked a color called "Light Avocado". I am also way into food, so I was so happy that the colors we picked turned out to be what I termed a "Guacamole" theme. It is happy and different and the end result is beautiful. For the actual work, Diane brought in 3 assistants and did the entire job in 4 days. They were neat and professional and efficient. She hung out with my dog during the day and didn't mind her being there. When she finished the job, the told me that there were a few spots that she was going to need to touch up and to make a list and she'd come back and fix them all. Because of the color of the paint and I also have lighting that changes depending on the room, there were a few large sections that needed another coat. At this point the house already looked amazing from her work, but I was afraid that when I got better lighting down the road, some of the minor issues would come back to bite me. I asked her to come back to take a look and she came back the next morning and walked through the house with me again. She told me that she wanted me to be completely happy with her work. I was leaving town so I gave her a key and she came back and fixed the touch up issues. She sent me an email when she was done and because I was out of town, she even watered the house plants that I forgot to ask my friend to do for me. I can't recommend Diane enough. I'm already planning to use her for some additional projects, I've given her name to a few of my friends, and I would HIGHLY recommend her to anyone.

Very well. Diane did a beautiful job! The rooms have both been transformed. She helped me with the color selection; I initially wanted a very dark intense color with a contrasting, equally bold color on an opposing wall. Diane kindly and gently talked me off the ledge here, and we decided to go with the bolder colors only in the bathroom. I could not be happier with the colors of both rooms. She is very precise when painting; I found only one small place (in a pretty good-sized room) where I needed to do a little touch-up. But Diane said she'd come back and do any touch ups where needed, gratis, but I took care of it in about five minutes, so again, extremely minor. Very personable, extremely knowledgeable, kept wanting to get me my paint at a cheaper price (it was kind of expensive) and made all kinds of suggestions to accomplish that objective. She did an amazing job of fixing a badly patched portion of my ceiling. You can't even see it now unless you know exactly where it is.

Overall, working with Diane was a very positive experience. We liked that she was supportive and knowledgeable about eco-friendly paint options. She gave us a good tip and some coupons to help get our paint costs down. She was able to schedule and complete the job very quickly. She did bring in 1 person to help her for some of the time. After she was done, we found 2 small areas that looked like they were missing a 2nd coat of paint- we brought this to her attention and she took care of it willingly within several days. One thing to keep in mind: She gave us a job quote that did not include paint and other supplies as some of the other painters we talked to did. I ended up buying the paint myself and the supply costs were very reasonable.

Diane was great to work with. She gave us an estimate that was extremely reasonable compared to the other two estimates we had received. She was very generous with her time by helping me pick out colors and had very creative ideas about what to do. She was able to start immediately and completed the job exactly as promised with awesome results! I would highly recommend her.

Diane at Eye Candy Interiors is wonderful! She has done three different projects for us and she displayed absolute professionalism every time with excellent knowledge of materials, procedure and execution. Her color consult was spot on! She right away knew what we were (inarticulately) trying to say about what we wanted out of the new color. She recognized and clarified what was not quite right about the original color (a color that we picked and was not quite right and we had lived with for a 7 years) and found us a new one that was much more of what we were wanting out of paint. She recommended high quality paint with low/no VOC paint so that there was virtually no odor at all, good for her while she is working too! She found us a coupon that was great deal too! The trim paint is applied perfectly; I don t think I found a brush stroke. She is thorough in her prep work and clean up; the house was spotless when we returned. She gave great advice about plaster repairs that needed attention and some texturing inconsistencies that were on the walls. Some work we had her do and some that we thought needed work, we learned we could wait a bit on. That was great since we were doing all this the week of Thanksgiving and had company coming in a matter of days. She finished exactly when she said she thought it would be done for what the bid was. I would highly recommend Diane, she is a pleasure to work with and we would definitely hire her again, in fact she is about to start on two more rooms for us.

Diane was prompt in returning my initial phone call and every subsequent interaction. She was courteous and professional. She assisted our family with picking a beautiful wall color that was complimentary to the rest of the house and was very tolerant and went the extra mile for my 2 year old daughter who "befriended" her and chatted with her non-stop. It was also very much appreciated that she respected our house by being careful and considered the fact that we had small children and used Low VOC paint. I would refer her to my friends and family without hesitation.

Diane painted the interior of our office. Her estimate seemed in line with others we received. She was able to work with our schedule and completed the job very quickly. She has a good eye for colors and was helpful in giving opinions and offering advice, which was what I wanted. She is very pleasant and professional. Everything was left very clean and the paint job looks perfect. I feel like she really went out of her way to be helpful with getting color swatches and making sure that we had additional coverage on the walls when the darker color did not meet her expectations.