Student Works Painting St. Catharines

This was a disaster from the start. The contract said they would do a full sand (wood exterior house), full TSP wash, full prime of the exterior and scrape the windows and spot prime them. They only sanded as far as they could reach from the ground and used no TSP for the wash. They used a small power washer that broke down after a while and started to finish the 'wash' with my garden hose. When I asked about the TSP the student operator said it wasn't very effective anyway. That was interesting since he used it as a selling point. They used the power washer on the window frames instead of sanding. This damaged the wood. I let this stuff go hoping things would get better. IT DIDN'T. I watched as they primed and painted the exterior of a 2800 sq ft house with trim rollers and small paint buckets. When I asked why they weren't using full 9" deep nap roller the reply was those were the rollers they had. I was assured the coverage would be the same. I did see the student operator using a full roller but that was for a very short time and since he would only drop in every so often the majority of the work was done by his student employees with the trim rollers. There were areas where they didn't prime at all but said they put an extra thick coat of paint on. They slopped paint and primer on many of our boulders at the front and on just about every section of eaves trough, soffit, white window frames and front sidewalk. Unfortunately they would just leave it instead of wiping it off. The best was the footprints in paint up the stairs of my wood deck at the back. They had to borrow my ladder because they didn't have a long enough ladder to reach some of the high parts. I'm in the country and have a cistern for my water supply. They hosed off their brushes on top of the cement cistern inlet and contaminated my water supply and cistern. Unfortunately all of my water lines and cistern had to be drained and cleaned. I called the 1-800 number because I was not able to contact the student operator. Their response was to contact him somehow and he called me a couple of days after claiming phone issues. When I complained about the overall job to the student operator one of his replies was that the job took twice as long as he had budgeted because I wanted the primer tinted. I pointed out that the time was not related to the tinting of the primer but rather painting a large house with trim rollers. He then said he also checked and the cistern must have been contaminated because it wasn't sealed properly. Those with cement cisterns know that the cement cover cannot seal against paint being soaked with water on top of the inlet. It was frustrating that my concerns were met with blame toward me instead of solutions. The painters brought out a portable amplifier for their rap music which consisted of a lot of lyrics containing the F and N word. They turned it down on day 2 though. After some back and forth the student operator said he would reimburse for the cleaning of the cistern and water replacement and reduce the price by a whole $300 for my time cleaning up the paint spilled on the ground. It took about a month for him to complete the clean up of the paint on the eaves and soffit. It took that long because he waited to finish clean up until after he had completed his other contracts. In all it took 2 months to get a house painted and cleaned up. I wanted to give students an opportunity even though I thought the price was high. The student operator told me he had painted for several summers and this was his first year as an operator. This showed through. He would drop in on most days and then be gone. No supervision even after I made complaints. I would never use Student Painters again.