I appreciate your quick reply. I'm not trying to get out of paying for the job. That's why I was trying to explain in my post what our specific grievances were. The crew lead did re-do a cracked section of the eaves by the garage after our first walk-through. We were both at work, so I don't know if he sanded and/or filled it and then painted it, but that painted area is now smooth. Thus, I know he recognizes what the problem is and can fix it. He just refused to do that on the other sections around the house near the peaks (which would require an extension ladder and not a simple 6 foot ladder). He stomped off angrily after we asked why the other sections weren't fixed to that same standard.

I didn't post all the photos we've taken, since most of them are cracks that didn't photograph well (look at the flat plywood panel in between the beams--those are where the cracks in the paint are) and exposed nail heads. The crew painted over the recessed nail heads, but we assumed they would be filled with wood putty/spackle. Is that not an industry standard? My husband asked our neighbor, who is a general contractor who builds custom homes, and that's what he said. But it's also possible that he has higher standards and we wrongly relied on the neighbor's statement. That's why I posted here to ask.

Yes, it's been some years since I had my business, and undoubtedly the industry has evolved. I am probably not in a position to make a judgment about the job on the basis of looking at a few photos on my phone.

I will say that any professional will, within reason, want a satisfied customer. I would try one more time with the owner or supervisor to get satisfaction.

Best of luck.

I also believe that you should state again to the OWNER of the company your grievances. You are getting nowhere with the foreman or sales guy. Contact the owner directly.

Is that plywood up on the eves? If it is, the painter was right, it's cheap wood. It can be fixed with caulk or floating out the area with MH Ready Patch, sanding that smooth and then painting, but of course since it's plywood, that is only a temporary fix. I have a few customers with plywood on their house that I have to re-do every 2 years. When you are dealing with painters that have sales guys and crews, this is just the kind of stuff that happens. It could be that the sales guy missed that plywood on the sales call...usually they don't even get a ladder out to check closely the high work. If fixing the plywood isn't in the contract, then they probably feel like they are working for free, but also don't feel right asking you for more money because it's really the sales guys fault for missing it, right? As for the other issues, your complaints are legit of course. Could it be you are picky? Maybe, but still these are things that should generally be done by the painter (filling holes, painting caulk, etc) as part of the painting process. I have been painting a long time and have worked with every kind of customer. Painting can be a subjective thing. Something that I find to be nitpicking may be very important to the customer, so a good contractor should understand this and try to take care of the customers concerns (even when they think it's a waste of time). Of course, there are some customers that can get crazy, but it doesn't seem like you are one of those with the pictures you have posted.

Are you saying $10k for interior AND exterior?

BTW, on this soffit, caulk isn't the only thing missing; there is no soffit, just rough framing.

christopher and jn: yes, the owner initially said he would meet us at the house and I sent him some dates (since we don't live nearby). He just replied to my email yesterday (a month after I sent it!) and proposed dates that don't work for us. In the meantime, I've been stewing about this and overthinking it. My husband is more upset than me(he thinks we should demand a full refund, which I think is not reasonable) and I'm trying to be reasonable. I'm fed up and at the point where I think I'd rather hire a second painting company to fix the issues and then deduct that cost from the first company's bill before paying them the remainder (assuming there is a remainder). For context, we signed the contract in January and the house's first walk-through was Feb. 29. It's now May 5 and we still have no resolution.

Paintguy22: I sincerely try to be reasonable in my interactions with everyone. I think my frustration and anger now is because I feel taken advantage of and wrongly "placated". The fact is that we pointed out specific concerns, the sales guy acknowledged them and promised he'd personally inspect the house to make sure they were addressed, and then we discovered they had not been addressed.

My primary house is stucco, so I did not know plywood has this tendency to crack. I would have assumed they would explicitly point out "This will look terrible even after we paint it unless you pay extra money." Perhaps "John" missed it, as you mentioned. I also wish the crew lead had explained why it looked so terrible rather than being so dismissive and defensive. "You have cheap wood" sounds like a bad excuse and is so much inflammatory than "'John' should have warned you that plywood panels have a tendency to crack and require extra work that is not covered by our contract."

Sombreuil: No, the quote was for the exterior only of a 4 bedroom single story house (albeit there are 2 high roof peaks maybe 15-20 feet high), a one-car garage/workshop, and a 4 car garage. This is also in a "modest" cost of living area where the houses are 10% of the cost where our primary house is (you can't even buy a 1 bedroom condo for what we paid for this beautiful property). All 4 bids were between $8-10K and we chose the second highest bid because the sales guy had impressed us so much and the company had good on-line reviews.

Also, I'm afraid I don't know what a soffit is. I tried googling and I *think* it's additional wood/metal that covers up this area? Is that something necessary or more aesthetic? The house is already 12 years old and we are the second owners.

PS we have over 30+ photos. These 2 were taken by my husband after the first walk-through and show the issue more clearly with the cracked eaves and unfilled holes.

Sometimes you don't want to fill nail holes on an exterior, like the picture you posted above here. I rarely see an exterior with siding like you've shown with filled nail holes. If your siding was smooth and not the rough woodgrain texture, maybe there is a case for filling nail holes, sanding them so you'd not see them. But again, based on the picture you are showing me, it is not common practice! You can pay a bit extra and do it, but I think it might look a little funny. The same applies for the trim around the windows. No, you don't normally fill nail holes (on an exterior) so you can't see them at all. On an inside, yes!

Plus fillers don't last. At some point, the filler can crack or pop out due to the change in climate.

Regarding the eaves and the cracking issue, that is cheap plywood. From what I can tell, the paint is not cracking and chipping. It looks like the plywood is cracked which it will do. Paint won't fix that. The paint will definitely stick to that surface. I don't think you will have any issues on the pictures I see. Not really anything a painter can do to my knowledge about the cracks in the eaves. The surfaces are protected. The paint is not a "coating." If you want something that is really crack free, you'd have to go with a "special" coating that is super think: elastomeric. It would be expensive and not really worth it (in my opinion).

As for the exposed caulk...sometimes after a paint job a painter will go around again and re-caulk areas that were missed...wait for it to dry and touch it up. If you had not paid the full amount and you were still talking to them regarding touch ups, my guess is that area would have been touched up with no issues. It looks bad because it is raw caulk. It is very common to have a final walk through and do touch ups in any industry.

I'd try again...don't threaten them but be reasonable...and maybe it will work out. If you are too particular, they will most likely give up and move on.

I certainly would not pay them until you are satisfied.

I'll add my two cents. I am not a
professional painter but I did paint the exterior of my house last year which
includes a portion that is wood siding. The "siding" is actually plywood with wide cedar batten boards. I researched
beforehand and was aware of the limitations of plywood as a siding material and
decided to proceed anyway (we may replace the siding eventually but the
timing was wrong for that). If I was hiring a professional, I would hope they'd have enough experience to advise me about that!

The paint on the wood was in poor
condition when I started. The prep work was extensive and included much
scraping and sanding. It was brutal! Afterwards, I cleaned off
any remaining dust carefully. I used two coats of BM primer, allowing ample
drying times between each coat. I then painted with two coats of the best
paint I could get (BM Aura in low-luster). It has been a year so still
too early to tell about the longevity of the job. But it does still
look like I just painted it yesterday. Nary a crack, nary a chip. It
looks perfect. It does not look like the picture you posted above. My paint looked like that before painting (and worse in some areas).

I will say that while painting was a LOT of work, it was nothing compared to the prep. In addition to the scraping, sanding, caulking, etc., I made certain that the surfaces were completely clean of any dirt or dust before I painted.

(If that is Hardi siding, I would want those nail holes caulked).

This cracking is a defect in the plywood. It is not even a good grade of paintable material. The fault is with whomever spec'ed an inappropriate material.

Paint is not going to help that; it is delaminated.

Casey

Is the OP wrong in expecting that a professional painter would advise him about that? Before going ahead and painting it?

@jellytoast - You are quite right that a true professional painter would discuss the situation and set the expectations before the work is started. I get irritated when professionals expect homeowners to know the hows and whys of their particular field. Isn't that one of the many reasons a homeowner might hire a professional?

In my own opinion, a contractor contracts for an outcome while a tradesman contracts for the job. In other words, the wall wasn't plumb isn't a suitable excuse for a contractor, he was hired to produce the desired end result. Realistically, a tile guy could say that the customer hired him to do the tile work and he did the best quality work he could do, given the surfaces he was working with. (although he should notice such issues and discuss before the work starts)

In this case, you wanted an end result and hired a paint contractor to deliver it. Unfortunately, the paint contractor decided to act like a painter painting the surface, not a contractor providing the desired end result.

The problem here is that the "contractor" sent a "salesman" who could have cared less that it was the improper plywood( and most likely was clueless). The work was done by the crew, under the guidelines the "salesman" set. Now the foreman had a bad attitude and should not be employed by the" contractor", but that is a whole different problem. The real problem is the "contractor" has not even seen the job. You need to get him(her) out there and discuss it with him. I am betting all the issues would be resolved, including a better attitude from the foreman(who was just doing what he was told)

This situation is another reason to deal with a small firm where the contractor, salesman and foreman are all the same person. That cuts out the finger pointing and missed communications on the contractor side.

Great discussion. Like I said, it could be that the sales guy never got a ladder out. From the ground or with a cursory glance, it may be hard to tell what the wood was made of. Sometimes even when you do a thorough job on the sales call, things can be missed and also, sometimes issues arise as you are working on the job. It's actually stuff like that that if the company dealt with it in a professional manner, the customer would probably refer them to others...but now, no. I agree it's nice to deal with small contractors, but most of them are booked 3 months out!

I never allow myself to be "booked out" more than 3 weeks, if I were booked out 3 months, I would be loosing many profitable jobs.

That's interesting Christopher! Is it because people will want to be put on the schedule and then cancel? I'm curious because our business is in a really busy time and I'm cautious about getting booked too far in advance. Can you explain what you mean?

I have found that most people do not want to wait more than a couple weeks. My good customers will but the majority will not. If you are booked out months in advance, how many good paying (mabey better) jobs are you loosing?

I think I have the same siding as you - it looks like Hardi Board. Those nail holes look wrong to me. If those are on every piece of siding then the original installer didn't know what they were doing. Except in special situations, the nails should be covered by the piece of siding above. There should not be nails down low on the siding. Since those holes should not be there, I would think that filling them would be an extra step. FWIW my neighbor has the same siding and the installer caulked the seams between the boards - the vertical seams. It looks horrible because the caulk is a different texture than the siding so it sticks out. Caulking those holes would probably give you the same result - strange shiny dots on your siding. Having said that, giving water a path into the siding is not good either. But if the house is several years old and that has not been a problem, you are probably fine.

On the soffit - I would have someone finish that area with an appropriate soffit material that will accept paint well and hide the 2x4s and plywood that are there now. No amount of paint is going to make that look good.

We went off the grid for a vacation in a remote area so I'm just seeing all these posts now. I reached out to the owner and we will meet when he returns from a lengthy trip later this summer.

I saw the posts re: how plywood just doesn't work as a covering. I'm surprised that the builder (who built this house for himself!) was cutting corners. in any event, I understand now that the sanding and priming involved isn't cost-effective. Yet I still wish it had been communicated to us at or after the first walk through, rather than let us believe that they would address it. Like I said earlier, they fixed one area (so the crew must have sanded and filled the wood to smooth it out).

Anyhow, I want to thank all the helpful responses on this thread.

Most all stinking builders cut corners

My father was an electrician and we always had wires sticking out of the walls.

I bet the builder thought to himself "I will never look up at the soffit so why spend an afternoon finishing it? Let's go fishing."

Let's go fishing." or most likely the local tap room

I'm back on the forums because we're selling our primary home (this was a vacation home) and just wanted to update to say that my husband met with the owner, talked it all out, and we paid half the difference. Neither party was thrilled with the result, but it was a compromise.

Good to hear that the issue was resolved. A compromise is a better result than no resolution at all.