Their Contractor Demanded More Money for Their Home Project—Just Because He Hated Their Choice of Paint
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Imagine hiring someone to paint a room of your house. How would you choose the paint color? Would you simply choose a color you like, or would you do research about different paint brands before deciding?
In this story, one woman was in this situation and chose the color she liked. She knew nothing about the differences in the paint brands until her contractor had already started painting and complained to her about the paint.
She wishes he had talked to her earlier, but since she doesn’t have a time machine, she’s wondering how to handle this situation.
Keep reading for all the details.
AITAH because I unknowingly chose a paint color from a cheap brand, and now my contractor is annoyed at me and raising the labor quote, also in a way that implies I should’ve known this would happen?
We need help figuring out who’s more at fault in this situation.
So we have a contractor and a couple of guys that he’s subcontracting who are doing some odd jobs around our house (My husband works over full-time and I’m in my third trimester of pregnancy, in case anyone wonders why we don’t just attempt the projects ourselves as we normally would).
One of the projects was painting our high living room walls + the ceiling.
My contractor had sent a text a couple weeks ago asking what colors of paint we had chosen, and I told him. He didn’t say anything, just bought the paint.
She picked the paint color simply based on what color she liked.
Now, the paint color of the walls was a Valspar color.
I didn’t know this, as I’m not a contractor, but apparently Valspar is a cheaper paint that can require more layers.
I hadn’t chosen it due to price or anything, I just liked the color swatch.
The contractor didn’t say anything about it, until they were one layer in and they realized it was going on very transparently.
It really is taking a lot of coats of paint, but did he use a primer first?
He started muttering about how it was a cheap paint brand that might take a lot of layering and that Sherwin Williams is better.
He didn’t really suggest that I do anything about this, it just seemed more like he was commenting that it was an annoying paint brand.
We’re now 3 coats in and it’s looking like they’ll have to at least do touch ups with a 4th.
Her contractor confronted her about the situation.
He approached me sounding fairly irritated, implying that “He knows we’re trying to save money” but the fact of the matter is that the paint color I chose from Valspar is just taking way too many layers and so this is going to require more pay than what was originally quoted.
I’m feeling a little conflicted here.
I feel that I’m getting blamed for something that I couldn’t have known about, and that he didn’t really inform me about until after it was already a problem.
Again, I didn’t choose Valspar because it was “cheaper” — I literally just liked that color.
She wishes he had given her this information when she first chose the color.
When I originally texted the swatches to him, couldn’t he have told me “Hey, so I don’t recommend Valspar because it’s so thin that it might require a ton of layers, which would increase the labor quote. Sherwin Williams is better, would you want to check if there’s a similar color that you like from them?”
Because if he had said that to me, I feel like I could’ve made an educated decision on what the potential problem was, and if I wanted to choose a different color in the other brand.
But because he didn’t warn me about it until too late, now I’m kind of left with no choice but to have him irritated at me and demanding to increase the labor cost.
Are we in the wrong here? What could we have done better? What do we say to him? I wish I could say that this was the first time we’ve had problems that have arose from him not communicating specific things with us before doing them, but it’s not.
It would’ve been nice if the contractor had suggested the other brand earlier, but it’s too late to change the brand of paint now.
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Let’s see what Reddit suggests.
A contractor weighs in.
Someone who works in the paint department shares their knowledge about paint colors.
If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a couple who is sick and tired of their neighbor’s kids dumping trash on their patio.
But this person thinks she only has two options.
As far as that last comment, she didn’t ask for more work. She simply picked a paint color without having any idea it mattered which paint color she picked.
As far as the comment from the person working at the paint store, color matching is definitely a thing. The contractor could’ve taken the paint swatch to Sherwin Williams and gotten the color she wanted in the brand he wanted.
At this point, I don’t know that it’s fair for her to pay more since she didn’t knowingly do anything to cause more work and the contractor could’ve easily talked to her about this situation before he started painting.
I wouldn’t rehire this contractor.
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