Distinguished Painting LLC

I wish I had read other reviews before deciding to work with James. He has been the worst contractor I have ever worked with. We started a project in mid-November. I was promised it would be done before thanksgiving. He was physically here only a fraction of the time. His workers weren’t given proper leadership or direction. He was unresponsive and when he did respond there was always some catastrophe for an excuse. These photos show what he left behind as he went on a trip to Hawaii and then never returned to my house. He left equipment and tools in my house (even though we agreed the job would be done and everything cleaned up by thanksgiving so that I could decorate my house for Christmas) and a bucket of all the hardware to put the doors back up. He left broken and damaged items in the house. I paid him half up front (which is normal) but then he asked for more before the job was complete. I paid him an additional $2500 because he said he needed to make payroll and wanted to pay his guys before the thanksgiving holiday. I realize now he just wanted to fund his trip to Hawaii so that was a huge mistake on my part. He didn’t return to finish the job or retrieve his stuff until February. I gave him chance after chance after chance to do the right thing and complete the job (because I knew I would never get my money back from him and it would cost me so much to have someone else come in and fix the horrible quality and unfinished work). He came back in February and I was duped into believing he was sincere that he wanted to finish the job and fix the quality and broken things. He swore he was committed to doing better but it was immediately apparent that was not the case. He spent the better part of two days either gone or sitting in his car in my driveway looking at his phone - he got about an hours worth of work done in those two days. I finally told him it was time to part ways and he grabbed all his stuff and screeched out of my driveway- like a true professional. Now I have broken lights to fix, damaged wood from an attempt to clean up paint blops, damaged grout around decorative pebbles (his worker got paint into the grout and after it sat for so long it was so hard to get out that he just scraped off the grout and left it looking worse than before - now I need to have it regrouted), a couch to clean from his dirty furniture cover, need to hire an electrician to fix the undercounter lights (he was given permission to remove one of the lights but he just snipped the wires in such a way that all the lights don’t work now), and lots of areas to finish that were never painted and other areas that need to be redone because of problems or poor quality. Please, please beware before you hire him.