We hired Hardings to Paint the extrerior of our house and garage. For the initial estimate they were good, on time, polite.When I changed the paint colour near the start date, they were good about it and went to take a colour sample from a house i had pointed out. Then for a while, they did not communicate with us (He had given a potential start week, and said if sunny, they would likely start on the Monday)...when that Monday came around (and as it was a bright sunny day) ....I took the day off work and waited. When they did not come I called. I was told that it would not happen until later in the week perhaps Thursday. Since I had landscaping coming in later that week I called again to let them know of this fact and to get an idea of where we were in the cue, I was rudely interrupted mid sentence when he said to me: " Do you like to play games ? I'll tell you what ? YOU tell me if it will be sunny in a week and I'LL tell you if we are coming!" This person was clearly stressed and did not give me the chance to explain the reason for my call. I felt very embarrased and insulted by the wayI was spoken to. I seriously considered calling the job off, but since we had signed a contract we decided to give Hardings a chance, based on their reputation in the area. A Few days later I was introduced to the person who would be doing the work. I was surprised that the person whom I had been dealing with was subcontracting the work out, I had been under the impression that he would be doing the work himself, with a crew. I introduced myself to the two men, we spoke briefly...they were supposed to start pressure washing the house....they tinkered around a bit around the house, for about 1/2 hour and then they left and never came back....a few days later, while the landscapers were working on the front yard, I was very surprised to see a large crew of men arriving and setting up to paint. It was not the same two as before, but rather about 5-7 men, some who did not speak english at all. I was worried about them working on painting while there was dust and dirt all around with the front yard work and spoke with our landscapers who were very professional and gave way for the painters to get started. When I returned from an errand (a few hours later) I was pleasantly surprised to see how fast these guys were working, the house, essentially was done. But when I came closer I was absolutely dismayed at the job...there was paint dripping down in the middle of our windows, the white trim was atrocious, and worst of all I found my beloved flower bed had been trampled to death. The landscapers were beside themselves, shocked by what they had seen: They had watched in disbelief as the painters had put plastic covereing over the 6X2' bed (Plants were about 2 feet high) and proceded to walk back and forth over the pastic, undiscriminetely. My Plants will not bounce back from this. My husband came home and when he took a look at the trim and the over all job he was very angry and called our Hardings contact to come and have a look for himself . He agreed with my husband that the trim was not good and they hired someone else to come and fix it. In the end the job was done and the work that had been done badly was "fixed", but I found this whole process exhausting and frustrating. We hired 5 different contractors to do various work on and around our home in the last 4 months and we have been extremely satisfied with all except this one. It is a shame since we thought if we were paying good money we would be happy with the work done.All in all I am sorry to say that this has been an unpleasant situation. This is the reason why we will no longer be recommeding Harding Painting to any of our friends and neighbours anytime soon.
