Boom Painting and General Contractor

We are now 98 days into a 10-day bathroom remodel project, which is still not completed, and we have not heard from them for 2 weeks. Boom Painting and General Contractor is not a qualified contractor. Santiago is not able to fulfill basic responsibilities of a contractor and should not be hired for contracting work. Hiring Boom Painting and General Contractor is the biggest mistake we have made in remodeling our home, and we are now left to find and pay for someone else to complete unfinished and substandard work.

We initially hired Santiago in large part because he indicated in our contract that the projected timeline would be 10 days. This was very important for us, as the request was for a bathroom remodel in a one-bathroom home (something that was very clearly communicated and stressed during our initial walk-through). Without having a bathroom, we have been unable to live in our home for over 3 months now. In addition to an egregiously deceiving timeline, and now an unfinished work product, for which we will have to come out-of-pocket to hire someone else to complete work that Santiago contractually agreed to do, Santiago repeatedly showed horrible work ethic, including the following:

• Not showing up: We live on an island and would ferry in for the day specifically to meet with Santiago on days he told us he was coming in. He did not show up on several occasions and did not provide any notice that he was not coming.
• Showing up late and leaving early: When he did come, Santiago would arrive at 10:00/11:00 AM and leave at 4:00/5:00 PM, typically including a 1 hour lunch break or Home Depot run, resulting in an average 4-5 hour work day.
• Substandard Quality of Work: Crooked floor tiles, unevenly cut and placed wall tiles, sides of wall tiles not painted/grouted, wrong grout color, super glue spots on window, wobbly toilet – generally a “figure it out as you go” style that resulted in a substandard work product.
• Uncompleted Work: Santiago did not install our sink, shower handle, bathroom mirror, or shower glass (which were all contractually agreed to); he also did not finish painting, light installation, sealant on the floor tile, or even replace our bathroom door, along with dozens of other standard finishing items for this type of project. Our bathroom is not currently functional.
• Messy work area: Santiago did not properly seal off his work area, resulting in measurable dust throughout the entire house, making it inhabitable while he was working and permanently staining our new floors. He also left huge piles of garbage in our front yard for over a month without visiting the transfer station once and placed dirty tools on our new floors and on picture frames.
• Ordering materials: Santiago did not order any materials in advance or have discussions with us prior to purchasing materials. He would call us from Home Depot and ask for our credit card number at the checkout desk, without showing us photos or confirming that we would like to move forward with the visible materials he selected. Any non-Home Depot items required many hours of research, ordering, and managing the delivery process from our end without any guidance from Santiago. He also over-ordered certain items and ordered things that he did not use. We paid for these materials, which have not been returned or refunded.
• Other:
o Blew a circuit which was connected to our refrigerator, leaving us without a fridge for several days and spoiled food; we called him immediately after he left when we noticed and he continued to drive home, did not take responsibility for the mistake, and we had to pay an electrician to fix it.
o Drove on and tore up our front lawn.
o Left us without a toilet for many days throughout the project, and did not tell us in advance, so we would go to the house, realize we didn’t have a toilet and have to turn around and find a place to stay for the night.

We have given Santiago countless opportunities to fix / make up for his mistakes, ultimately realizing that he is unfortunately incapable of doing so. We are sad and disappointed to post this review but feel that it is important that others who are remodeling their home do not make the same mistake that we did.

I am very pleased with the results of BOOM Painting. I had a lot of anxiety going into this project as I was recovering from a "PTSD" situation with a bad contractor hire gone VERY wrong. Santiago and Claire responded very timely to the BuildZoom process. In the very first moments of meeting them, I could tell that Santiago knew what he was doing, he didn't hesitate to start evaluating the project and the areas that were in need of the most work, explaining what went wrong and what could be done to fix it. As stated, I previously hired someone else to paint recently installed MDF, which required a lot of prep prior to actually painting. I have a lot of background in construction projects and it was helpful that he discussed his process, what needed to be done, what could be done and how the finished product would look, again I was very skeptical starting over due to my past experiences. Upon confirmation of his references, all of which were great and spoke highly of him, we agreed to start work. His bid was in line with industry standard and actually more than reasonable given the work involved. He was timely upon arrival and I moved out for 5 days for the project to be completed as he uses an alkyd oil base for millwork (joy to my ears, but stinky). The prep that was done far exceeded my expectations, they covered everything to ensure that no overspray and excessive dust would occur on walls or furniture. He sent daily photo updates of the project as it progressed and completed the work a day early. What I also liked about him is that he has a general contracting license, but was very upfront about what he does and he takes pride in his work. I highly recommend BOOM Painting for many reasons: value, timeliness, quality, professionalism and just an all around good guy. It was refreshing. When we did the walk-through he asked me on a scale of 1-100 how he did, initially I gave him a 90, which then increased to 96 as I walked through and started to see how much a difference there was from where I started and the bottom-line is that I did not have very high expectations after my past experience. I'd now rate him at 106, while there are a few areas that due to the pre-existing MDF had issues, my overall satisfaction to see the realize the potential is the reason for the score.