Matt Jones is a lovely man with a charming English accent and I cannot speak to other aspects of his handyman work, but he is a terrible house painter. I requested a bid to paint the entire exterior of my small/medium sized Rossland home which I'd purchased the previous summer. I'd been dealing with structural and roofing issues that took priority over much-needed cosmetic work, but the exterior shingles hadn't been painted in at least ten years and I knew if I waited much longer I'd be paying to repair and replace instead of just paint. Mr. Jones' estimate was substantially less than the other two bids I got (by over 1 and 2K respectively) and he claimed expertise in this area. His billing system included weekly invoices due on same day. It was difficult for me to tell at first how the painting was going because it rained intermittently during the first week. However, by Friday of that week, at which point approximately 60% of the initial estimate had already been invoiced, it was clear to me that he was running WAY behind schedule. I sat down with Mr. Jones and emphasized that I had hired him because he'd outbid his competitors but I was concerned about how little had actually been completed. He assured me that it only APPEARED as if he were running behind because so much of the work had been prep work. He convinced me to let him continue and reassess in a few days. Well, by the end of the second week, he'd billed me for 31 hours worth of work (which represented 85% of his estimate) and less than 25% of the exterior had actually been painted -- with only ONE coat of paint. The house looked like a patchwork quilt. Three window frames (out of a total of 14) had been painted plus most of the ground floor trim, but nothing at all had been done to the second story or gable trim. In addition, about 80% of the two smaller ends of the ground level shingles (but none of the sub-boards or flashing) had a single coat of paint on them. Moreover, the cutting in was poorly done. He really should have taped first to protect the soffits and window trim. I went back to A&A painting (who had provided one of the original 3 bids I'd gotten) and according to their assessment, the work Mr. Jones had done (for which I was billed 31 hours) would have taken A&A less than two hours to do. In addition, Mr. Jones had apparently scraped off an excessive amount of cedar shingle during his paint removal efforts (which were neither uniform nor complete). A&A proceeded to pressure wash and scrape the remainder of the old, loose paint and redo much of Mr. Jones' painting which they described as "paper thin". They finished the entire house (minus the gables which were vinyl and looked fine after a pressure wash) in about two days. In fairness, I should mention that Mr. Jones did spend about three hours sealing some holes with foam and fixing a door frame which was work that had not been included in the painting estimate. However, the fact remains that he provided an estimate that was off by a factor of at least five times and the work was sloppy. read more