Allstar Painting & Decorating

Before starting on our house, Marvin (All Star Painting and Decorating) agreed to purchase and use Sherwin Williams paint— we picked “Roman Column” for the walls and “Extra White” for the trim, baseboards and doors. The job was to take 6-7 days. On the 28th day of working in our house, the job was still not complete. We had just purchased the house and Marvin agreed to start 6/30/23. The house was vacant for the first 4 days of painting and furniture was not being delivered till day 11. During this time myself, my husband and two babies were living in a single bedroom in the basement trying to stay out of the way so the job could be completed. While he was working upstairs we asked if he could paint the kitchen cabinets either during or after the rest of the house was finished. He said it would be an additional $600 which we agreed to. He said he could do them as soon as we bought the paint. We bought the paint and he sprayed the cabinets. Only after the cabinets started peeling about 3 weeks later did we realize that he did not prep and paint the cabinets correctly. He did not sand or seal them as he should’ve done. He simply sprayed over the bare doors without prepping anything. There are even portions of the cabinets that were missed completely. (See photos). During this time I noticed that Marvin was not using the paint we agreed on – Sherwin Williams. He was using Valspar paint from Lowes, which is cheaper and not as high quality. When I confronted him about using the incorrect paint he responded that he thought that’s what I wanted to use. He actually told me that there was no difference between Valspar and Sherwin Williams paint which is 100% inaccurate. Sherwin Williams paint is more expensive and is a much higher quality paint than Valspar from Lowes. We paid him to buy the more expensive paint and he didn’t do that. He even brought over a “Roman Column” paint sample from Sherwin Williams prior to starting so we could sign off that it was the right paint and the right color we wanted. He also gave me Sherwin Williams phone number as a reference number for him before he started the job. We called and Sherwin Williams said he was a good guy and he had bought paint from them before. Based on this, we assumed he knew what he was doing and knew the correct paint to purchase. Prior to finding out about the Valspar paint I asked Marvin multiple times if it was the correct paint/paint color and he always said yes. It didn’t look right to me based on visual comparison to his swatch but he said the lighting inside made it look different. Since I have never had a house painted before I believed him. During the painting process, I noticed that walls in some rooms were not matching. He said he ran out of paint and needed to buy more. Instead of buying the original incorrect Valspar, he now bought the Sherwin Williams that I had previously confronted him about. When he had to repurchase paint he didn’t know what color he needed to match to because he got rid of the original paint buckets. I told him multiple times to take a paint chip from the wall to Lowes to match it but he never did. He then purchased paint not knowing the correct color. It did not match again. Instead of repainting the entire rooms, he just tried to touch up with the new paint. Everything looked even worse. (See photos). Again I complained that the paint wasn’t matching and told him to repurchase the original Valspar paint even though it wasn’t what we wanted. By this 16th day, I just wanted him to finish so I could finish unpacking and completely move into my new house. During multiple days of touch ups, he touched up the upstairs walls and ceiling with the incorrect paint/wrong color not just once but several times. I continued to remind him that the Valspar paint was the wrong color and that he needed to touch up with that but he never did. Every time he would touch anything up it would just be worse than before. (See photos) He touched up the ceiling with a semi-gloss primer when it was supposed to be flat paint. He added flat white paint to semi-gloss paint thinking it would then turn to eggshell, which for some reason he didn’t purchase; it didn’t turn to eggshell either. I told him just to use the original paint he used for the ceilings because it just kept on getting worse. (See photos) His response each time he made mistakes was, “it’s not that bad” or “if you stand here, you can’t see it.” Throughout the process there has been paint on the carpet, floors, appliances, vanity and light fixtures. All of which I have had to scrape and clean off. (See photos) The walls in multiple areas of the house are either splotchy, multiple paint colors, have roller marks or were just missed altogether. It looks like a dirty roller was used. (See photos). He painted the doors with a paintbrush, so you can see all the brush marks. I asked him if he typically paints the doors with a paintbrush, or if he sprays them. He responded that he usually sprays them, but he ran out of time on this job. We couldn’t figure that out since he had now been in our house for 25 days. I asked for a $60 credit per door (12 doors, not included a few closet doors) due to the fact that the doors looked horrible and we were going to now need to fix them ourselves because he said he didn’t have time to do it the right way. (See photos) After he touched up a few major areas, he wanted the rest of the money. I said no, I would like you to come Saturday morning 7/29 for a final walk through because I wanted to see how the paint looked after it had dried. After he left that night on 7/28 he texted me, threatening to put a lien on my home if I didn’t pay him in full even though to us the job wasn’t complete. He said he had finished his work and it looked great. Our definition of great does not match Marvin’s definition of great. (See photos) I told my husband, Mike, to talk to Marvin about all of this. Marvin responded that he didn’t want to speak to Mike because he didn’t like how Mike treated him. I’ve been present during those conversations and Mike has never been rude or vulgar towards Marvin. Mike has only reviewed what we agreed to at the beginning, pointed out multiple mistakes and asked Marvin to fix his work. Apparently, Marvin did not like what he heard or thought that he was being treated “poorly”. Our expectations have always been to do a good job, have good communication throughout the process and that it needed to be done in a timely matter. None of those points were met. The job is nowhere near complete. There are several HUGE mistakes to the point where the house needs to be repainted. Mistakes such as splotchy walls, trim being painted poorly with multiple areas missed and doors either not painted or have visible paint brush marks. Walls still do not match in rooms. (See photos) Due to the threat of legal action by Marvin, we no longer feel comfortable having him on or near the premises. We reached out to a couple local contractors to come and walk through the house to look at the paint and give us an estimate to fix and complete Marvin’s job. The contractor and his partner were both mortified that Marvin believed that his work was good work or even near completion. We had a second contractor come out to the house for a second option, he asked who painted the house and also couldn’t believe how much damage was done to the house. He said the paint and trim was so bad and looked mixed with all sorts of different paint that he was going to need to sand the walls, trim and doors in order for the job to be done correctly. Every person that has been to our house cannot believe the horrible job that was done. We told Marvin that we would be paying ta new contractor to correct his mistakes and that he would need to pay the difference. Marvin never acknowledged this via text message. Instead, told us that he was going to put a lien on our property.

he has been doing good work.

From start to finish they were quick, professional and kind.

Marvin is a very professional painter,he excels in every part of his work. He's on time,very dependable,makes sure that you are completely satisfied with the work performed.

He was great. He came he had it all wrapped up in just 3 days. He did great. He also matched the colors very well.

It went great. He is really helpful. He was timely and professional. He gave me a reasonable price.