I have used Shalom Home Solutions on two large projects and have recommended them highly to at…read moreleast 4 friends who have also used them over the past several years. Unfortunately, Amilcar Benitez is a is no longer ethical and has turned to dishonesty and being quite shady. He painted our brand-new home in early 2020 at a cost of $10,000, which included every wall in the home as well as all the ceilings. Amilcar asked for the specific white color from Sherwin Williams that we wanted, and we gave him the information. I noticed that while they were painting the house, at the end of each day they left the grey paint for the walls on the job overnight (normal), but there was never any ceiling paint around while the crew was not here. On one of the days of the job, I dropped by while the crew was here and I noticed a 5-gallon bucket of paint that was not the correct white. I asked Amilcar about it and he assured me it was for the garage, which was also going to be painted white but we had not specified the color because who cares, it's just the garage.
At the end of the job, Amilcar mentioned they couldn't finish all the last rounds of touchups, but they would be back after we finished moving in. Even though his contract stated the last payment was not due until the job was finished, he asked me to pay him the rest of the money. I wouldn't have paid him if I didn't know and trust him, but that was a mistake because he never sent anyone by to finish the job. In addition, within a few days, I noticed a lot of sloppy work had been done in the basement since it was painted last. The crew didn't protect the carpet, and there are several areas with a lot of paint that had been dropped. I contacted Amilcar a few times about this, but he did not return my calls.
Fast forward 8 months later and the builder is fixing all the nail pops on the drywall, which is pretty standard and covered under their 1-year warranty. I went to the basement where Shalom placed all the leftover paint, and there was no ceiling paint which I thought was odd. Oh well, I still had a record of the paint color for the ceilings that I had sent to Amilcar so I went to Sherwin Williams and asked for gallon of the same color ceiling paint. After the builder touched up the ceiling paint all over the house, we noticed that the white color was completely different than what was already on there! I was stunned, but now it made sense why Amilcar and his crew had been so shady about not leaving us any leftover ceiling paint and why every day when they were leaving, they would take the ceiling paint with them.
I called Amilcar about this and he stated it was probably a mistake and that he would look through his records and talk to his guys. This was in November and since then, I have called him multiple times, emailed, texted, everything. He has completely ghosted me, which further shows this was all done intentionally and he doesn't want to do anything to make it right.
Unfortunately, now I have 6,0000 square feet of ceiling that looks really bad on all the spots that were touched up. Since Amilcar wasn't even nice enough to tell me which color they actually used, I have no way of matching it, so I am going to have to pay thousands of dollars to re-paint all the ceilings in the entire house.
Mistakes are human, but anyone that is ethical would try to fix it. When they purposely are shady and don't offer to make things right, this is when you're better off avoiding this person at all costs!