Feb-Apr, 2017
Kollin Hamilton talked a good game about being on site daily and having backup when he couldn't, but what he said would be a three-week job drug out to two months with long periods of inactivity, and he ended up abandoning it unfinished. He greatly oversold his ability to do the range of work he agreed to in the contract. His paint crew started like gangbusters replacing rotted siding and facia and we were quite optimistic, even contracting for another small job, which we greatly regret; more about that later.
Despite promises to scape, sand, and caulk the surface, the crew painted over chipped and cracked wood on the house; Kollin agreed immediately when we pointed it out and had one guy here for one day to sand and repaint the spots we could reach to mark with tape. However, we could only reach the ground floor of a two-story home with attic gables; we pointed out that there were equivalent problems higher on the siding, which were never corrected.
The paint crew left painting and personal trash in the yard each day (fast food containers, etc.), despite Kollin's quote to remove all debris daily; not horrible, but not clean. The crew were respectful and pretty good about learning to close the gate to keep our small dogs in, but they left open paint cans that collected rainwater unattended in the yard for days on end.
When we thought things were winding up, Kollin offered to come by and work up a punch list with us, but he never responded to our attempt to schedule. Around then we saw that the piled up paint cans were a lesser quality paint that what was specified in the contract. We left Kollin a message about that and asked him to call, and he has never again responded to a call, text, or email; he abandoned the job, unfinished, with no explanation whatsoever. Whole aspects of the job were never started (applying water seal to decking), some left incomplete (replacing weather-damaged decking planks), and several areas of trim paint were left undone.
The second job was to replace a broken window and its mate. The windows were replaced, but his crew never came back, leaving raw wood frames and mullions on the interior and exterior.
Every communication with Kollin was polite and patient, and now we have not got any response from him in two weeks. If he was unhappy with us at any point, he never let on. We're angry now that we'll have to find somebody else to finish the work, and extremely disappointed in his lack of integrity and disrespect in leaving us high and dry.