Sawz N Ladderz

Update: The owner of Sawz N Ladderz ignore inquiries from the Best Business Bureau in TX so now its BBB accreditation has been revoked!

This guy is a cheat. Got screwed out of a deposit on a house painting job, strung along for a month with no work, and was ignored when I asked for the deposit back. The guy is a loser that keeps his theft low enough that no one will seriously go after him. Beware.

I hired Harold from Sawz N Ladderz to paint the interior of our house in Harker Heights, TX. While he was there I noticed that the back of his business card indicated that he did other things around the house. I was in town for only a couple days and needed to get these things done right away (the house was on the rental and sales market).
Harold gave me a great bid for the painting of the inside so we decided to give him our business. I also needed a steel post installed on our privacy fence, the edge of the kitchen counter re-​grouted (between the counter top and backsplash) around the bar/​sink area, and a crack repaired in the ceiling (along the seam tape).
We had to head back out of town the day they started the job so I was not there to supervise. That being said — we have friends in town and my real estate agent (Lety Ford — she is great!) was willing to stop by and check after the work was done.
The painting looked pretty good. There was a spot in the hall where my daughter had written on the wall with crayon. The crayon could still be seen. Harold said he would go back and prime over that spot and re-​paint it. I, personally, believe that he should have noticed it and fixed it without our prompting. That being said, I would still have hired him due to his low rates and decent painting job.
As far as the other things go — I can’t say the same thing.
We discussed having the crack filled around the counter top/​backsplash with something that would match. Instead they bought white latex caulk (bright white. The original color was a tan that matched the tile work) and caulked all of the kitchen! It looked terrible. I called and asked why he did such a thing. He explained that there were cracks everywhere. I told him that was simply not true. I showed him exactly what needed to be done and I said nothing about the whole kitchen. I am assuming that the did the correct area in white and realized that it looked terrible and didn’t match so they took it upon themselves to do the entire kitchen. He agreed to fix it. Instead of just pulling out the white caulk, he re-​did the whole kitchen in a tan caulk. It still looked terrible. He seemed like it was no big deal and agreed to not charge me for it (though I now have to hire someone else to come in and remove all of his mistake and fix it properly).
He told me he could fix the crack in the ceiling by filling it in and repainting over it. He is the professional so I trusted him. After just a couple weeks, the crack was back. I sent him a text message explaining that it was back and that I would like a refund. His exact response was, «I informed you that we would caulk the crack and paint it with the existing paint you had. That is what we did. There is no refund for that». My response (exactly) was: «But you didn’t fix the crack. That is ok. I will be leaving an honest and fair review of your work online. Thank you for the painting job.»
*I just checked the Sawz N Ladderz website. It states that they offer a 1-​Year guarantee on all remodeling and home improvement services”. Sadly, this appears to not be the case*
I am assuming that the steel post is holding up. I have not had the opportunity to check it.
I was also told by Harold that he could send me an invoice online and I could pay it that way. I had left a check with someone to pay him but the price ended up different than we originally had planned (with me not paying for the grout job) so I needed to pay this way since I was out of town. Harold was less than thrilled with this and it was pretty apparent that he did not want me to pay this way even though he told me it was a possibility.
All in all, I think that Sawz N Ladderz has poor business practices. If there was a way to attach pictures I would do so.
I gave two stars instead of one because with his inexpensive painting quote, I assumed it wouldn’t be perfect. It still looked pretty good. I am giving two stars also because I think Harold and his men did a shoddy job doing everything else and they tried to cover their tracks in the process.