CertaPro Painters of Naperville

I hired them to repair and paint my ceiling. Granted, its a cathedral/​vaulted type ceiling, so its not first grade level easy (I could have painted that myself if that were the case). The rooms all combine, but the important part was the patching at the apex and fixing of cracks caused by the bad winters we’ve had. Their pricing is for the birds. They quote something REALLY high, and then you can «settle» for the lower price. It’s not as though I’m spending a dollar on a pair of flip-​flops and then wondering why they’re broken in a week. I’m spending $ 1000, which to me is a lot of money, so I expect SOME quality. Not a month later, and the ceiling is bubbling from where they retaped. And what is their reply? «This would have been very costly and that is why [redacted] priced the ceiling as he did… said that you did not want the extra expensive. If you want us to come back we can redo this again but it would have to be charged at time and materials.»
Well, gee, you did a craptastic job for $ 1K, let me give you more to do what, exactly? Shit it up some more?
Obviously they’re being priced out of the lower end market, so their solution is to give poor quality at a lower price. I’d rather spend the money on someone else to fix it then to give Certa any more of my money.

We had our bottom floor of our home painted by Certa Pro painters last year. They were also hired to stain a new staircase, smooth the ceiling of our family room and take down one wall of wallpaper. I can tell you that it’s taken me a full year to write this review because I was so livid. Absolutely, this was the worst experience we’ve had with a contractor.
The sales person came out and gave a written estimate, she was nice, professional, american, english speaking, etc.
The day the staff arrived, I was shocked to see that they were all hispanic with limited English, aside from the foreman, who was hispanic, but did speak english.
1. Lack of english speaking personnel.
2. They don’t use tape, so you will have loads of paint on your wood trim, email me for pictures. It’s appalling.
3. They smoke on your premises and will use your exterior flower pots as their personal ash-​tray.
4. They will not spackle nail holes (although the contract states that you will remove any nails that you do not want painted). Seems like paining 101, spackle the nail holes dammit.
5. Any areas that you point out with blue painters tape that needs attention, will be ignored, but the will remove the blue tape as a ploy to make you think they corrected the issue.
6. They will carry on conversations with each other in spanish. They will swear frequently.
7. Although they claim that they will work on each room one by one, they will not, they will disrrupt your entire home, making you leave and get a hotel room.
8. The stain left on staircase will feel like sandpaper when they leave.
9. When they want full payment, suddenly the english speaking foreman can no longer speak english except to say payment, payment, payment when you want to point out unfinished work.
10. They will complain about how hard it is to take down the wall paper you hired them to do.
11. Their «spot» stain test will be on a spindle, the hardest area of the staircase to remove if you don’t like the color.
12. They will not cover your furnishings appropriately. You will have paint on your front porch, carpet, hardwood floors, furniture, etc.
13. They will carry on long cell phone conversations talking about how they don’t want to spend any more money or time on your job (yes, I do speak some spanish).
Run for your life, do not hire this firm.