I’m pretty much done with this whole painting situation. And I don’t mean “done” as in “the job is complete and correct to my satisfaction,” I mean “done” as in “I’ve had it up to my eyeballs with the ridiculous nature of how this has gone.”

I had a meeting on Monday with the crew chief and the paint crew. I pointed out the three remaining problem areas. The support that runs above my railing on the porch outside was spotty and not uniformly covered. The trim around my front door was never prepped correctly so you could see the layers of old paint under the new paint. The soffits were painted too thick and looked “drippy.”

The crew chief acknowledged these items in turn. The support did, in fact, get re-painted, and it looks fine now. Awesome. The soffits, as it turns out, weren’t actually their fault - they showed me that if you sand down the drips, the old paint shows up underneath, so I accepted that - next time I’ll know. But my door trim…

First they argued that the job wasn’t quoted for “that sort of sanding and prep work.” Odd, since that was the whole reason I called them out there and I specifically pointed that out when I got the estimate done. Regardless, they sanded the thing down and it looks almost reasonable, but then they slapped the paint on so fast you can see ridiculous brush strokes all through it.

They didn’t tell me when they were leaving, either, they just sort of left. I haven’t heard from them since. They did leave a can of the paint behind, so the new plan is to just fix the damn trim around the door myself and call it a day. I’m tired of fighting them to get the job done right.

For all you Oregon homeowners out there - avoid WILLCO Painting and Construction. It occurs to me that what they probably do best is more industrial work - stuff like apartment complexes and so forth - where the person having the work done isn’t going to scrutinize the job.

That said, I still think I just got a bum crew. The crew chief I dealt with was cool all the way to the end, but I really got the impression the crew wanted to do as little as possible and get the hell out of there.

Ah, my first poor experience with contractors. I’m sure there are many more to come.