I am not one to leave reviews online, but after my experience having Neat Home Services paint the interior of our home, I felt I should let people know what to possibly expect. Also, I am leaving this review about 5 months after work was complete because we've had paint cracking in areas and this 'pro' does not want to fix it without charging us for the repairs.
Also, before jumping straight into my story, I want to say the owner of Neat seems like a nice guy and he is quick to answer questions, return calls, create estimates, etc. That being said, everything else about the actual painting and the quality of his work crews was pretty bad(or at least the specific crew that worked on our house). Also, the price was not the highest bid I received, but it was not the lowest either.
So, on to a nice list of the issues we've had:
1) Day one, the crew shows up and starts filling holes, sanding walls, etc. I assume the crew knows what is supposed to be done because the owner is never actually on site (and he is the only person you discuss the job with). Well I was wrong. The paint crew starts patching walls and holes in one bedroom and one bathroom that were not supposed to be painted. Luckily, the owner agrees to paint the bedroom for free as there was no way to touch-up all of the repairs.
2) The day the crew starts to paint the walls, I come in to find they are not removing any outlet covers/switch plates or duct registers. Apparently, their plan was to paint all covers with brushes or rollers. Now I do not know what standard practice is on this, but I've never seen anyone try to paint around outlet plates and registers because its almost inevitable paint will get on the cover and even if you do not get paint on the cover you have obvious brush strokes. Anyway, I tell the crew leader that they have to remove all the plates and registers and he agrees. Well, what I find later is that they actually only removed some of the duct covers and plates, but many more end up with paint on them because they tried to use a roller along the edge. This might sound like a small issue, but it actually a pretty big job to go back and fix. Also, some of the duct covers get ruined because you can't get the paint off without removing the base paint as well.
3)We get a few days or a week into the project and all of a sudden only 1 or 2 guys show up most days to work. Admittedly, I do not know how long it should take to complete our size job (about 3600 sqft of floor space), but I thought it would be no more than 2 weeks. I believe in the end it took about 4 weeks, with anywhere from 1-5 guys showing up each weekday. Near the end I had to demand the the painting be finished because we had other work to get started on. Even then, the crew almost missed the deadline. Luckily, my father-in-law just about went crazy on the crew leader so they came back on a weekend to finish.
4) Now that painting has been done for a while we continue to find areas on ceilings, walls and trim where the guys were being lazy or too fast and they ended up leaving drip lines (which have to be sanded down), crooked edges, small unpainted areas, etc. I haven't even bothered to ask Neat to fix those issues because we now live in the house and I do not want to deal with the old crew working in almost every room.
5) Back to what I mentioned at the very beginning of this review, about a month after painting was done we started seeing paint cracking in one bathroom and in some other spots around the house. I eventually call Neat and the owner quickly sends out our crew leader. Unfortunately, the crew leader decides it was not their fault. Supposedly, the paint is cracking because there was old wallpaper adhesive on the walls which had already been painted over by a previous owner. Again, I don't know standard practice here, but I find it hard to believe that a professional painting company would look at room, charge you to paint it, then come back and say they couldn't have known there would be issues so now you need to pay to repaint everything. Good thing our whole house doesn't have cracking paint!