Jalal was reliable and never too late - he showed up to the job and communicated with me what jobs he would be doing for the day, and was good at cleaning up his work for the most part. He was a decent cost as well for all the repairs he was doing in addition to the difficult to paint areas. He informed me when something came up and had to reschedule our third day, but otherwise he finished the job in the number of days he said he would. Because of the delay, I ended up having to paint a baseboard he was going to because I had a laundry machine delivery planned for the day after he was supposed to be done. Some of the work looks great - one spot where I had a hole is pretty much gone and most areas are painted really well, but you can tell painting is not his specialty. He didn't use painter's tape to cover corners anywhere - even though he had two rolls of it in his toolbox - and got paint on my popcorn ceiling, baseboards, door trims, and drips of paint pouring down the corners, moving onto the neighbouring walls. All the areas where I ask for mud touch ups was overdone and could have used more sanding, so now it sticks out a lot more than if I even got the holes fixed in the first place. Some of his mudding even left more holes that weren't there before. His painting over these touch ups is blotchy too and you can see all the streak marks, showing he didn't care to blend in with the rest. He didn't paint one wall all at once, and didn't go over the full wall as a last coat so you can tell where he stopped and where he picked up again under the hallway light as well. When I asked him to redo this, he said he would charge me more, even though it was his mess-up and I already paid him in full. He did buy and repair a toilet wax seal that broke when he had to briefly remove my toilet, but he didn't clean up paint stains on my stairs carpet, and instead of simply telling me what to buy to clean myself, he decided WITHOUT ASKING to trim down my carpet, so now instead of stains that could have been removed, there's bald spots that can't be fixed. He also knicked some spots on the wall that he had just painted, which shows he wasn't being careful enough to protect his work, which required more of his blotchy mudding work in places that were perfectly fine before. On top of that, he never told me during the quote time that my bathroom had a bad fan and needed better bathroom paint to withstand my moisture, nor did he even ask me what type of paint I wanted there. I had to pring up paint type with him, in which he said he was going to use the proper paints for each room. Meanwhile, he used the lowest quality paint and eggshell in my bathroom with shower on both ceiling and walls, so now any moisture streaks are already staining my freshly painted walls after two showers. Not to mention, he failed to tell me how long to wait to use the shower, and peeling of my ceiling in my shower started only a few minutes into my shower. So clearly, he used the wrong paint. Instead of being apologetic for the situation, he became extremely argumentative, fibbing that I knew all along he wasn't using proper bathroom paint - as I'd expect any professional painter to know to stick to - simply saying they don't make this paint anymore, meanwhile they definitely do. He said I had to charge him in full to redo with the correct paint for his own mistake, ao I just asked him to come back and touch up. He was willing to, which was mildly generous for how much he showed he didn't want to be there - by the way he rushed the missed spots, his own dents in his own freshly painted work, pointing a fan directly at the touch up on my ceiling that caused it to dry out too fast to the point that his touch-up cracked and made his visit practically pointless, and most of all the rude attitude, basically saying tough luck for the streaks he left in my hallway wall and once again not taking blame for his mistakes. He was respectful in the beginning, and turned out to be not so good at customer service when he couldn't face the fact that he had made mistakes. I think with time he will improve in his skill and clean-up, but he needs to learn to take negative feedback with the positive, and has to know that having your own business, you need to not only be precise and careful with your work but also be good at customer service and be willing to carefully and properly fix your mistakes. He also needs to check in before doing some things, explain properly and check in during his quote all the types of paint he could use and giving the customer full knowledge and understanding, and check to make sure there are no new knicks or patchy spots before saying the job is done. If you want a quick paint because you're moving out and don't care about it looking good, Jalal can get it done. But if you want a job well done, better go elsewhere - I could do better than he did.
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