I am so frustrated and upset! I wanted to put coving in our bedroom, bought £200 worth of coving and tools, gave it a go but we were struggling with the angles and didn’t want to waste lots of it trying to cut it. I found a home and garden improvements company on our community Facebook page that had good reviews and had commented on previous posts saying they could fit coving. I sent photos and links to the coving I’d bought. All fine, they quoted £450 to fit the coving and also to paint the coving, skirting boards, door frames. This felt like quite a lot but we can’t sort the rest of the furniture etc. until it’s done and it’s been hanging over us for months, they said 3 men would be on the job for potentially 2 days so it seemed a fair price. The messages were polite and professional.
Two men turned up today, no van just dropped off at my door, with a very small amount of kit. Straight away I didn’t get the impression they were very confident. They were here for 5 hours today and came down after about 2 hours to say they couldn’t cut the corners and I would need to buy some pre cut corners. I was working with somebody downstairs and all a bit flustered, said that was okay and to send me the link and I’d buy some tonight for tomorrow. I was a bit annoyed as we could have bought pre cut corners and done it ourselves!!
so they stuck half the coving up leaving a gap in each corner (too big to fill about a pound coin size). Then I had to ask them to leave as I needed to go back on the school run and hadn’t expected it to take so long. They sent me the link, I checked it and it’s for corners that are a different design and 50mm shorter than the coving we have!! Checked with screwfix (where we bought the coving) and they don’t sell any precut corners for that model and neither does anyone else that I can find.
I’ve come home and had chance to look properly at what they’ve done and I’m really upset. They have sellotaped the coving in place, used loads of glue which is all over the freshly painted walls and ceiling. Of course I expected some mess but they hadn’t brought any wipes and said they would bring some tomorrow?! They didn’t ask me if I had any or for any kitchen roll etc. I asked if the walls would need repainting where the glue was and they said yes but your child’s scribbled on one of the walls so you’ll need to repaint anyway!! (This is one scribble that I could wipe off, in a totally different section!!) they also only covered one section of the carpet, haven’t covered my white velvet headboard which now has glue on it :(
Now I don’t know what to do. I don’t want them doing anymore work as they clearly have no idea what they’re doing. Happy to pay them for today’s work just to avoid any upset as they know where I live etc and were here for about 5 hours. They arrived with no ladder or anything, all quite strange.
I called a plasterer nearly in tears who was lovely and said he only fits proper plaster coving so he couldn’t fix the job, I’d have to remove it, buy proper plaster coving and then he would come out and do it. He did say with plaster coving I will need to repaint above and below.
do I get him to come and fit proper coving and buy new coving? Do I take it down and sand off all the glue and repaint? Do I try and fill it/bodge job? I am just so upset I was so looking forward to getting this job ticked off and I’ve gone backwards!! We have 2 young children, work is crazy and have a million other things going on so really didn’t need this :( it looks like the £200ish we’ve already spent on coving is going to be money down the drain!