NORTHWEST RESIDENTIAL & COMMERCIAL PAINTING CO

Terrible, horrible paint. Way overpriced A couple years ago, my house was down to the studs and completely remodeled. The interior and exterior was painted by my contractor’s painter. He did a fine job, but the paint he used was terrible. It’s a flat paint, and marked like crazy. You put your fingers on the wall briefly, and the oil on your skin gets on the wall. Lean against the wall in jeans that haven’t been washed a lot, and there’s a mark from the denim. Just a couple examples. Even worse, when attempting to clean the marks, the paint readily came off on the microfiber cloth. There was no way that I could live with that paint. So I decided to spend the money and effort and get all of the interior walls repainted. I got bids from several painting companies, one of them Northwest Residential and Commercial Painting Co. LLC. In my original email of inquiry to the company: “I completely remodeled my rambler in 2016 and I hate the interior paint that was used. It goes with the modern style but it marks very easily. I want to explore getting the interior completely repainted with a more sturdy paint.” Travis’s bid: $7,480 includes 4 man hours of baseboard touchups. 2 year warranty. Travis recommended this paint https://www.cloverdalepaint.com/for-your-home/productcatalog/product-detail/74/ecologicregnbsp100-acrylic-interior-washable-flat-gl1 A second painter’s bid: $4,975.00 including any repairs. 2 year warranty. The recommended paint is Benjamin Moore Ben Interior Eggshell A third painter’s bid: $3636.11 plus any drywall repair at $50/hr. 3 year warranty I am very aesthetically oriented and particular about how things look in my house. I notice things that many others do not. During the initial walk-through with Travis to discuss the job requirements, I pointed out a few things that I wanted corrected with the new paint job. Travis said that his guys have very high standards and quality of work, and there would be no problem to correct them. As in, it went without saying that his guys would do a better job. In fact, Travis made several dismissive comments about the job that my contractor’s painter had done. Travis said that if any of his guys had done that, he’d have made them redo the work until it met Travis’s standards. Based only on what Travis was telling me, I came away from that walk-through with the belief that Travis’s crew almost walked on water in their painting ability and quality standards. When I pointed out to Travis that his price was quite a bit higher than the other two bids I received, his response was: “Regarding the price, I really don’t concern myself with other competitors prices. I have no idea what quality they do, or how they pay their employees, etc… What I do is look at the project and listen to the customer and then ascertain how long I believe it will take to give the customer what they want with the products they want. I know you have a great eye for detail, and I appreciate that. That also means that we will need to take the right amount of time to not only meet, but to exceed your expectations. That is my point of view.” Because of this, I decided that for me, it would be worth it to pay the much higher price to get the high quality that I want. That is the only reason that I went with Travis over the $4,975 bid. However, that decision to go with Travis is one of the few regrets that I have in my 61 years of life. I spent A TON of money and the result is zero improvement on the original paint job. That was the ONLY reason I wanted to repaint: to have paint that didn’t mark easily and when it did, the marks could be easily washed off without the paint coming off on the wiping cloth. The paint that Travis so strongly recommended as a washable flat paint, marks just as easily as the original paint. Marks do not wash off with water, or even slightly soapy water. Per the paint company, which I called for “from the horse’s mouth” information, I have to use a TSP (trisodium phosphate) dilution to remove marks, then wipe that off with clean water. This is horrible, horrible paint. I will never recommend it for anything. An example: first responders in black uniforms kneeling with backs against the wall left swaths of black coloration on the walls. Travis’s crew’s attention to detail is not nearly as stellar as Travis thinks. They left things as finished, that definitely were not, some very obviously not. I had to point these out to the crew. Additionally, someone dripped on a closet door, and did not wipe it up, so it dried there. That door—which was not part of the job—had to be completely sprayed again, on the final of what were (too) many visits to my house to finish the job. I will say that Travis did have his guys come back as many times as it took and finish the job. Other contractors may not have done that. Travis really did want to satisfy me. The paint job looks good. The problem, in addition to using horrible, awful paint, is that Travis overpromised and his crew underdelivered. The expectations that he set for me were inappropriately high. Travis also was not as involved as he should have been, and as he told me that he would be. Travis wanted me to communicate with him, and Travis would tell the crew. Several times prior to the crew being back at my house, I explained very clearly to Travis what the crew had done the previous day, and what needed to be done that day. That never got communicated to the crew, as he said that he would do when I communicated with Travis. Here’s just one example, via an email that I wrote to Travis after an aggravating day: “They didn’t finish on Friday. I was at a doctor appointment when they arrived (at 8:35am when I was just pulling out of my driveway), which took a long time. By the time I got home, all the bits of blue tape I’d put up were gone. I assumed that you had explained to them what needed to be done, per our walk through when you were here with Rick and I think maybe Damian too? I’m not sure that you did that. I am not sure if they finished the ceiling. They didn’t say either way, and I don’t know how to judge if it’s done, or it’s as good as it’s going to get. Some things that were supposed to be fixed, were not. Other things that they did fix, were not done satisfactorily. I had written a list of some things to review with them. When I got home from my appointment, the list was not on the counter where I’d left it before I went to my doctor appointment. I asked Damian and he said it was in the living/dining room. I never saw it, and Damian never showed it to me, so we never got to discuss it. So I recreated the list and have put on it every place where there is a piece of tape, so it’s all listed out. They did not correct the problems around the towel ring in my master bathroom, that you and Rick and I reviewed in the walk through. They were unaware of that. Some of the fixes they did for window sill edges were unacceptable, so Jose put some more mud on a few that I pointed out. There are still other edges, on which I had blue tape, that still need to get redone.” I would bet that Travis was as frustrated as I was at the end of the job. However, I will never know because Travis stopped communicating with me after Rick finished spraying the closet door. I never got a warranty, even after asking twice. I paid in full so that wasn’t the issue. I would never hire Northwest Residential and Commercial Painting Co. LLC again nor would I recommend them at Travis’s pricing. In Travis’s case, you don’t get what you pay for.