Little Willies Painting Plus

Little Willie’s Painting Plus/Willie Rhodes was contacted about remodeling the house of our recently deceased parents in Wichita Falls, Texas, so the house could then be sold. The house was empty, had no furniture in it, and no one living in it to delay the remodeling progress. Willie Rhodes provided an estimate of labor and material costs for the remodel, and an estimated time frame of 1-1/2 to 2 weeks to complete the job. An agreement for him to do the work was signed, and he was given a partial payment upfront, with the remainder to be paid upon completion of the work. Willie started out making progress, and made a lot of promises (and excuses), but every time he was asked how much time remained to complete the job, he could never give a firm date. There were days at a time when he did not show up on the jobsite, or would only be there for a short time.At one point, Willie called us (the heirs) and let us know that we would have to buy a new shower valve, because someone on his crew “threw away one of the knobs and covers for the bathtub”, and because they were old parts, he couldn’t find replacements. He also said “I had the plumber out today I was told that they no longer can install two handle shower knobs but they can repair the stems and get new knobs. He has another plumber that may be able to get the covers, I’m waiting on him to call me.” Another five days passed with no progress on the shower valve, or anything else, so on week 11, we showed up in person at the house and let Willie Rhodes know that we could not go forward with him as our contractor, as he was already 9 weeks behind schedule, and there was way too much work left to do to the house (including the still unfinished shower valve), and progress was not being made. He was paid in full for the work that he had completed, and he signed paperwork stating and agreeing that he had been “paid in full”. Before Willie Rhodes left our house, it took him over an hour to load up all his materials out of our parents’ backyard workshop, and it appeared to us that he had been using said workshop as free storage for materials for other jobs, as there were items stored there that were not part of our house remodel.
After Willie Rhodes left the house, we began cleanup on the mess he had left behind. The carpet in the house was only one year old, and Willie Rhodes promised that he would keep the new carpet covered to prevent damage, but he did not. He had also promised to use plastic to cover the windows and the appliances, but he did not. After Willie Rhodes left and the cleanup began, we vacuumed up and dumped out of the vacuum cleaner no less than 1/3 of a 33-gallon garbage can full of drywall mud, dust, and debris, just out of the living room carpet. The carpet in all the rooms had numerous areas where paint had been spilled on it, and splattered on it, and the doors, windows, and mini-blinds had to be cleaned of all the ceiling and wall texture that had been splattered on them. His painting of all the walls in the house also left much to be desired, as the lines where the painted walls met the trim were nowhere near straight. Overall, it was a terrible and unsatisfactory result. Willie Rhodes also broke the light fixture in the bathroom of the house, yet never told us about it. Instead, he hid the broken fixture outside and we didn’t see it until he had already left the premises. When we called him and asked him to replace it, he refused to pay for it, stating that “we still owed him for paint”, in spite of him signing the paperwork that he had been paid in full! Willie Rhodes also removed the shelf in the closet (over the clothes rod) in order to paint it, but he never put it back or returned it!
Willie Rhodes also painted the exterior of the house, but during that process, he got white paint all over the dark gray trim in multiple areas around the house. The contractor we had to hire to complete the job (after we fired Willie Rhodes), had to paint the trim again to cover up all the white paint. Willie Rhodes also failed to prepare the exterior of the house for painting, and all the grass and shrubbery around the house ended up getting painted white, due to lack of protection from the paint spray.After we paid Willie Rhodes what he was owed, and told him he was done and didn’t have to come back, Willie Rhodes then took all the paint that we had paid for, and didn’t leave any of the paint colors or numbers. We couldn’t do any touch-up on the interior paint, as we had no idea what brand of paint or what shade of paint he used. We paid Willie Rhodes for the paint and it belonged to us, to be used on our house, so he stole that paint from us when he took it and left the project. That shows lack of character and integrity on his part. We chose Little Willie’s Painting Plus because of the good reviews that we read online. The work he did for us, though, did not justify good reviews and we wish we had not used his company.