Paying top dollar for painter. Didn't completely scrape house and is now painting. Normal?

Ok maybe we're not paying top dollar, but we're paying close to 5k. The guys "scraped" (sanded and power washed) for two days. We have a rather large old farm house. They only removed maybe half of the old paint. There were still huge portions of flaky, old paint. I figured they would "scrape" for at least one more day, but the next day they started priming it. Last night after they left, I walked around the house and noticed tons of areas that are obvious to anyone that they were untouched until the paint hit. We have two dormers, both of which were not washed, scraped, or sanded before they started painting. They even neglected to knock down the wasps nest in the top corner of the dormers. I just need to know if this is normal, how should I bring this up, do I have a right to be outraged... which I currently am. Oh and just a few other little things I've noticed that seem fairly unprofessional: No covering of windows, no covering of porches that aren't being painted, paint runs all over... there is more but i'm really interested in the lack of scraping. Please help if you can! :)|||As the owner, you have every right to advise the company that they are not performing up to your expectations. Do not allow them to continue priming until you are satisfied with the prep job.





Have you paid them? NEVER pay total upfront. If anything, give 1/3 to start, 1/3 mid-point, and the rest when the job has been completed according to your contract and your satisfaction.





If they paint over flaky paint, the new paint will just flake off. With an old structure, it may be cost-prohibitive to completely scrape all old paint off, but it should be done as much as possible. Anything that is to be painted should have been washed.





Your windows should have been masked and your porch tarped. Sometimes they don't mask windows and just come along later and scrape them, though.





So, I would say call them and tell them to stop until you have come to an understanding with the owner about how the project should proceed from this point.|||sounds like your paying good money to bad painters|||We had a painter come out to give us an estimate, to paint our front porch. I could smell liquor on him, so that was that, we did it ourselves. And my husband is taking chemo at this point in time. When the guy was here, he said, oh the spouting doesn't need painting, etc etc. We have found it is truly hard to get good help these days, everyone wants to "slop it up", get their money and get out of there. Stop them before they go any further, do a little war dance, and make sure they do it right. If you can't stand there and watch them yourself, get someone who can, a friend or relative.