Who knew finding a good, reliable painter would be so hard? Sadly, there were no reviews of local…read morepainters on Yelp (hint, hint... write a review if you've used a painter before:). So I was pretty lost!
I didn't realize that most "small time" painters are strictly neighborhood only. Meaning, I'd call someone who I'd gotten a recommendation for (from a friend) and they didn't cover my neighborhood. Even painters located in Squirrel Hill, which I don't think is that far, wouldn't come to Dormont. So the search went on and on.
I finally just picked a guy that I googled who had an address listed in Dormont. I called and left a message. We traded calls for a couple days. He had to come and look at the space for an estimate. Okay, no problem. He came by and quoted me $400 for two rooms around 64 feet with 8ft ceilings. We'd buy all the paint and patch any holes. All they had to do was show up with their equipment and paint. Pretty cheap, I thought. Especially considering I called the big guys in town, Pittsburgh Painting Company, and they quoted me around $1,600. Yikes!
So $400 it was. I called to schedule an appointment and never heard back. I called again and finally heard back. But the guy, who I now found out was Joe himself, was hard to understand. I later found out he's hard of hearing, so I don't think he hears everything you're saying over the phone. I made what I thought was an appointment, but wasn't sure.
Sure enough, two guys showed up a little after 8:30am the morning of the appointment. After looking at my ceilings, they told me, in their expert opinion, it would be a waste to paint the ceilings if I wasn't going to have them fixed (they had cracks all throughout and would have had to have been patched over in a separate, longer process). So we agreed for $400, instead of painting the ceiling, they would paint the hallway leading upstairs. Done.
They got to work painting my house in about 8 hours. Pretty fast for what seemed like a large area. But the red we choose for one wall in our dining room had to be painted again, because of the color. So they made plans to come back a couple days later. Good thing they did...
Because, the next day in natural light we noticed a ton of spots they had missed. The paint for all the walls except one was a light/medium gray. There were spots everywhere that the old beige paint was peaking through. From what I gathered, they had thought they were done with the gray. The only thing I can say in their defense was that it was an incredibly dark day (rainy and cloudy) and my living room didn't have any overhead lighting, just lamps. They did have these tiny fluorescent lights they brought in to "help." But when I saw them working, it really didn't look like their lights were doing much good. Should painters have better lighting? Probably, but I'm no painter...
Joe made plans to come back on Thursday afternoon. But it ended up being after 5pm and it was just him. 5pm in the winter means darkness. So... it's dark again. And there were hard to see spots in the dark that needed to be touched up everywhere. PLUS, the one red wall needed painted again. It probably wasn't smart have him come at 5pm, but I think he was coming after a job on his own time...so what are you going to do.
He patiently went through the house with us and touched up all the spots. It was still really hard to see, and we ended up spending another Saturday getting the rest of the missed spots.
When I asked how much I owed him, (because I figured maybe he'd add on tax or something) he told me $600. Come again? Of course I told him he had quoted me $400. He then started to say something about doing the hallway. I told him he did the hallway instead of the ceilings. The guy working with him said we should call it even at $500. I just settled at that. I know, I should have probably stuck to my guns. But I didn't.
I felt like it was still way cheaper than someone else would have done. I felt like they were nice guys, who are trying to make an honest living. If you're looking for a fast, cheap way to get some rooms painted in the area, you could go with them knowing there may be some work still involved on your end. If you're looking for an easy and efficient paint job, where you don't have to put in any work, then I'd opt for someone different. But know you may be paying the big bucks!