Need some advice please! We moved into a lovely 1920s semi in October that needs a lot of work and have finally got to the decorating. Found a decorator who agreed to do all the work for a great price and saw pics of his previous work which looked great. We shut the doors to the kitchen and utility and left him to it. Then two days in we realised it was a big mistake - he painted the walls without sanding or filling them (pre-agreed), the cutting in could have been done by my five year old, there was paint missing in small patches and drips in the dried paint.
We spoke to him and he said he would "touch it up".
Three days later and no difference and he had managed to wreck all the new skirting boards, plaster a curve into a straight wall, rip new vinyl flooring and damage all the kitchen plinth.
At this point we asked him to leave before he could do anymore damage as we didnt feel that he was capable of repairing what he had done.
He is now demanding £850 (including £220) for materials for the 5 days work. I dont think we should have to pay him as we now have to have everything redone and additional repairs and when we had another decorator come to take a look he said we shouldn't.
My husband says we should pay him just to keep the peace.
What would you do?
TIA
Home decoration
Decorator ripping us off?!
foibles2011 · 23/06/2020 22:26
@goingtotown you're right we were naive enough to believe he would actually fix his mistakes. And between homeschooling and work I just didnt have time to keep an eye on him. It wasnt until the weekend when all the dust sheets and tools etc were moved that we saw the real extent of things.
We have had another contractor take a look who said dont pay and have another coming today.
My main concern is that we're going to end up in court! I'm not normally a fighter but I dont want to be bullied either. I guess I just need to know how to deal with this. It's not what you expect when you trust someone with your home 
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