Arun Jayaraman
2 years ago
Rising Phoenix’s work was sub-par and very expensive. During the initial walkthrough, Juan portrayed a keen eye for detail and dedication to quality that his crew clearly doesn’t share (and, in retrospect, Juan only pays lip service to). There were issues with Rising Phoenix even from the beginning, with Juan not wanting to paint samples of various paints on our walls (he tried to charge me extra for this service that every other painter does for free) and instead providing small painted pieces of canvas (as if that’s a reasonable alternative when deciding which paints to use for an entire house). Then, Juan conveniently “forgot” about agreeing to include certain additional items in the quoted price as part of me giving him the contract (needless to say, if you are unfortunate enough to do business with this company, get everything in writing beforehand). Also, there is a clear disconnect between what Juan tells you he can/will do and what his crew actually does (despite him telling me several times that he met with his crew/walked through with them to “get on the same page”). As his crew isn’t detail oriented and doesn’t seem to really care about doing an excellent job (despite Juan’s claims to the contrary), they either miss many things or do them poorly. The resulting touch-up work then lead to a patchy paint job (or rather a patchier paint job, as poor use of a sprayer caused streaks and patches in several areas during the initial painting). This sloppiness also manifested in other ways, such as the crew leaving globs of dried drywall mud in river rock on the outside of the house, splattering paint on the river rock, smearing paint on my hardwood floor and bathroom fixtures, etc. Also, they straight-up lied about several things (stating that they would do various things that I asked them to but they didn’t and other things) and some of the drywall repair work they did is cracking after three months. When I pointed out various problems, they made it seem like they were doing me a favor by fixing them; at various points Juan even had the temerity to suggest said that he would address the issues if I tipped his crew. Frankly, given the positive reviews (although, in retrospect, it is telling that this company doesn’t have that many reviews given how long they’ve been in business and how busy Juan claims they are), cost, and the attention to detail that Juan portrayed during our initial walk-through, I was really disappointed and upset by the overall poor quality of the work. The one redeeming thing was the person who did a nice job of some minor exterior stucco repair. Avoid at all costs (unless you want to pay a lot for shoddy work and be frustrated by their inability to fix the problems properly despite pointing them out over and over)! There are much better painters out there who will do good work at a much better price, like the one I hired to fix all the issues that Juan’s crew caused/left behind.