Rio,

I am dealing with a painter that has been working on painting my house in KY since June 1. When he started, he said he had to work hourly because he never knew how much work the job would actually take. He said that he does a perfect job & everything would look wonderful when he got done. He started off in several of the rooms & they did look great. Only problem is that he could go back over & over & over & over the walls until they were just perfect. He would patch & smooth out the walls & then that would cause other problems & then that would take even longer to fix until he could paint it just perfectly. On an hourly basis it was becoming rediculous. I told him that he couldn't continue on that way & he ended up getting in a crew for about a week to get more of the painting finished before I left for California Aug 2. During that time, he took it upon himself to do things I didn't want him to do like putting up smoke alarms (he didn't even ask & put them in places where I didn't want them put). He messed with the locks on the doors (to fix them). Then he started painting the trim on the outside of the house (what the ?????). I had originally told him that I was going to be doing the painting on the outside & that I wanted the inside finished so I could get my furniture moved in. Not only that, but when I power washed the front porch wood deck, it knocked off the paint he had painted (so I knew that I didn't want it painted anyway) & when I had them wrapping the wood, they had to take off what he had painted & re-do it with the white metal that he should have not painted in the first place. I had an area in the fireplace that I needed to patch & told him I was going to do it. I came home one day & he had done it. He continually did jobs around the house that weren't part of the painting & was changing me hourly for them. I was starting to get angry before I left for California & told him that I wanted him to give me a set price for finishing up the painting while I was gone. He told me he had finished up the entryway & epoxied the basement floor. I wired him the money for that & he had said that he finished up the archways & painting the shutters for the outside windows (that the carpenter was to put up while replacing the windows). I told him I wasn't going to pay him the last amount until I got back to KY & checked everything out.

When I walked in the front door & saw the entryway, I blew up. The job was half done, the white paint was showing through & none of the holes he made putting the fire alarm up in the wrong place were filled well enough not to show. The archways were so bad it wasn't even funny. Now from what he had lead me to believe while I was in California, everything should have been done, or at least everything other than the arches & the painting around them (assuming that he hadn't actually finished the arches that he implied were finished). Not only that, but he had turned off the pilot light to the hot water heater when he did he epoxy on the basement floor & never lit it again. So when I arrived home after a long last day on the road, I couldn't even have a hot shower.

You can imagine the criticism that I have regarding this situation. I have tried to be nice over these past few weeks, trying to get the job done correctly. However when I ended up going room by room & putting post-it's on all the problems.....the house looks like it has measles. The master bedroom had the ceiling with patches of two different colours of white & the white was showing through the green. Along the door, there was a complete strip of unpainted wall. When I asked him about it, he said there had been a wave in the wall he was trying to fix.....so he made even more work for himself. There was a patch of ceiling in the computer room that was completely missed. It was missing before & left & something he never bothered to fix.

He didn't say anything about the quality of painting he did on the entryway until I pointed out some of the problems....then he said he didn't realize how bad it looked (which was what he said about the family room painting before I left (after spending over $700 to have just that room painted). He is the painter....he should have seen the poor quality of work he did on the entry way & should have finished the job correctly without me having to point out all the problems. I began to wonder if he was thinking that when I came back, he could go back to the hourly thing to fix up all the things he didn't do right......he tried to tell me that it was worse than he thought & that he had underestimated the job.....he was trying to make more work in the stairwell where no one would see the waves in the wall & yet he couldn't patch the holes & dents where they were obvious.

The question here would be.....is criticism valid in this situation???? I definitely think that critisim about his work ethics & the quality of his work are quite valid criticism since I feel that he definitely took advantage of the situation. There are many things that I can't complain about even though they were prolems.....he would talk instead of work, but then, I was getting information that was helpful to me in getting settled (so I don't criticise that). He helped me do some things I asked him to help me with & I don't mind paying for things I asked him to do that were other than painting, but the other issues have become huge problems & for the amount of money I have already paid him to paint the house, I expect the perfection he braggs about & will not compromise in letting him off, nor will I finish paying him until everything is completed to my expectations. I feel that he needs to know that his work ethic is lacking & that I am not happy with the job that he has done considering all the money I have paid him & that he seems to only do a good job when he can do something over & over & over & over again, costing more & more & more money when he is being paid hourly. He pointed how he charges so much less than other painters, but then he takes so much longer.....so where it the value in that????

To top that all off, he started a rumor about the carpenter that replaced all the windows in my house. The carpenter did a fantastic job with only minor points here & there that he finished up & fixed. The rumor that the painter started was that the caulking job the carpenter did was horrible & that he (the painter) was going to have to go around & tear out all the caulking & replace it. Where in the **** did he come up with that? The only thing I can think of was that when the caulking job wasn't finished, I was getting the huge red wasps inside the house. The job wasn't finished....it wasn't that it was a bad job. Once the caulking job was finished....no red wasps. Then he also was saying that he couldn't do the arches because of the bad job that the carpenter had done with the framing of the arches. The problem was that he didn't know how to finish off the arches & took on a job he didn't know how to do (charging me by the hour for that also). I finally told him to get someone who knew what they were doing & found out from that guy that the painter had messed up the arches & made it harder to finish....but was blaming his bad job on the carpenter & not himself....in order to justify the extensive amount of time it was taking him.

There are definitely times where criticism is necessary & I think this is definitely one of those times. He hasn't listened to my to much of what I have said so far & continues to push my tolerance. I try to be very constructive with my criticism, trying to make it understood what isn't acceptable to me or to other people, but the more I get pushed, the less patience I have with trying to be constructive. Sometimes when criticism comes across badly, we have to look at our defensiveness to what we have done when we get criticsm.

But here lies the important part of criticism in that we also have to look at whether the criticism is valid or not & I am sure that internaly, this painter knows what he has done & it's just a matter of whether the customer is willing to confront him or let him slide.

I think this is possibly a good example of needed criticism.....tried to be nice, pointing out where the problems were in how he was doing business, but the more I keep getting pushed, the less kindness lies in the criticism.

Sorry for the length....it's just something that I'm dealing with right now besides the horse issues,
Debbie