I can't begin to describe how disappointed I am with the work done by A Lady's Touch Painting: "Sloppy" and "careless" are the most accurate descriptions I can give to the job done in my home by owner, Marlene Centanni. What was quoted as a two-day paint job kept me and my family out of our living room and master bedroom for six days (including over the weekend), and by the time it was over, I was more anxious to get Marlene and her gear out of my house than I was to have her come back (again) to fix all of the mistakes, drips, patches, dings and slapdash work she left behind.
The job entailed painting two rooms, including preparing/repairing the walls, which were scuffed and a bit beaten up; it also included removing woodwork around one door opening, and installing trim work in the bedroom. Nothing was done with any degree of professionalism.
1. Marlene called on Monday to ask if it was possible to start a day early - Tuesday - because she had an opening in her schedule. I agreed, moved all of the furniture out of the work areas, took the TV off the wall, removed curtains and slept in my basement to allow her to start the next morning, as we agreed. By 11:30 Tuesday morning, she had not arrived. She called to say she would be unable to make it that day. Her arrival time for the remainder of the job was between 10:30 and 11 each day, and there were days when she would leave as early as 3, her equipment and drop cloths strewn all over my living room, bedroom and up the stairs ... making it difficult and dangerous for us to get to the only bathroom and to my kids' rooms. I continued to sleep downstairs during this whole nightmare.
2. The paint job was so poorly done I could see the original color through the new color. I started to apply dots of painter's tape to mark the areas that needed going-over, but after my 30th piece of tape was applied, I called her and told her I needed her to come back and apply a complete second coat to the walls. She said that she'd already done two coats but that she would do a third on Monday. I was very disheartened to hear her say that - I was in the house while she was working and know when she started painting. How a professional painter could state that two coats were done to a room of that size in two and a half hours is beyond me. Plus, I saw her work. I know it was only one coat. But regardless, the paint job she offered as a finished product was slapdash and of extremely poor quality. Besides not covering the original wall color, she left drips and patch marks on the wall, and drips of wall paint on the white trim, on the glass of the windows, on the stone around my fireplace, and splatterings on a shelf in my kitchen and on the kitchen floor. It was a mess.
3. If you expect her to install woodwork with any degree of competency, you'll be disappointed. The job she did on my bedroom woodwork looks like it was done by a fix-it-yourself'er with no clue how to make a miter cut or operate a nail gun. The corner cuts don't match up, the trim is gouged in spots, the nail holes were not filled prior to painting and the ends were left unfinished and not even painted. My husband did the trim in our sons' room and it looks infinitely better than her job. Probably because he took his time and actually put forth some effort. Had the job not been so time-consuming, he would have done our room, too, but we thought it was worth the investment to have a professional do it. Not so. As it stands, we'll have to rip it out and do it again if we ever decide to sell our house. It looks that bad.
4. And speaking of looking bad ... the doorway between our kitchen and living room looks terrible. The doorway had very simple decorative trim that I wanted removed, leaving just a clean edge to the wall. It looks so bad I actually cried when I saw it the day after Marlene's last day. She ripped off the trim and then applied spackle to fill the gouges she created. She did not sand the spackle; she just painted over it. It looks like a sloppy birthday cake with clumpy, messy frosting. She didn't even bother to swipe the crumbles of spackle out of the corners of the doorway ... I reached up and touched the corner, and the spackle just crumbled and fell onto the floor. There is no hiding the poor quality of the work. It is visible as soon as you step in the front door.
I began photographing all of the sloppy work, but quite honestly, it became so overwhelming that I stopped. I am so embarrassed that I even hired her, I don't want to keep pointing out all of her mistakes to my husband. I was on maternity leave, home with a newborn when Marlene was in my house working, and obviously I could not stand over her shoulder and watch every brush stroke. But I shouldn't have had to. If my home is representative of the quality of work that she does, I strongly suggest you just take a week off of work and do the job yourself. You'll save money and aggravation. read more
