Fernando the Neat Painting & Decorating

Fernando the Neat & team are excellent! Fernando managed to squeeze our small job into his busy schedule which we very much appreciated since we are on a deadline to complete a few projects. He checked in with his crew each day at the job site (a rarity with contractors). His crew do EXCELLENT work! I’m very picky with details & they do impeccable work. They are also very tidy. I think his prices are reasonable especially considering the level of quality.

We’ve had Fernando paint the inside and outside of our house a number of times and he’s never let us down. Owning a business myself, i appreciate consistency. Every time Fernando and his crew have come to our house, they’ve been polite, worked hard and, most importantly, they’ve done a great job. Prior to Fernando, we tried other painters. What I’ve learned, the hard way, is you get what you pay for! You can’t go wrong with Fernando and his crew. I’m sure they’ll do a great job for you.

I’ve yet to have the good fortune of using Fernando’s house painting service, but I want to attest to his kindness: Today I bought an 8 foot by 5 foot piece of wood lattice at Home Depot. When I realized the lattice wouldn’t fit inside my Prius, I hauled it back and forth across the store to find an employee who would help me cut it into smaller sections. The employees in the lumber department said they couldn’t use the store chop saw because of the lattice staples and none offered to help me use the store hand saw even though it was pretty obvious I didn’t know what I was doing. I was awkwardly balancing the hand saw and that giant piece of lattice when Fernando, a complete stranger busy shopping for his business, offered to help me. He gallantly spent 30 minutes sawing for me and didn’t give up – even when he suffered a minor cut from the saw. He declined my offer to treat him to lunch and accepted only my thanks.
I don’t own a home, but if I ever do and need paint work, I will definitely call Fernando. What a gentleman! I sincerely appreciate his generosity.

Summary: As much as I like Fernando’s crew, I would not recommend Fernando for your next painting project. He over promises and under delivers. He does not pay attend to details and delivers amateurish workmanship.
Fernando came recommended by some friends. He gave us a comprehensive estimate at a good price. They began work about on time.
1. I requested and Fernando agreed to fully prep the building (caulking, sanding, scrapping and replacing some window trim) before they primed so we could inspect their work. His crew primed a side of the building before I could stop them. They had to contact Fernando so he could tell them what he had agreed to.
2. The wood that Fernando provided his crew to replace the old window trim was under sized so the wood didn’t sit flush with the old wood. It’s just decorative trim, but the uneven joints looked sloppy.
3. On Friday, Fernando asked me to inspect the build over the weekend while his crew was off. I did, and I marked areas that needed further work. But, Fernando never told his crew. This caused unnecessary confusion on Monday with his crew since they considered the work unfinished.
4. I showed Fernando a few bigger problems I found. Surprisingly, he didn’t think they were not problems. In frustration, I showed him a simple mistake where someone tried to fix a broke joint in the garage door trim. Someone had nailed down and putty in the gap caused by a warped trim. The trim should have been replaced (a $ 2 – 3 piece of wood). Fernando said it was not a mistake, grabbed some sandpaper, and started sanding the jagged joint so it would look straight.
5. We agreed to disagree. I asked him to stop, since I couldn’t trust him to properly do the work he had promised. I itemized how little work his crew had finished and asked him for half or my initial deposit back since they had not even finish preparation, let alone start the painting. He refused to refund anything.

We hired Fernando and his fabulous crew in November to paint our kitchen cabinets. His prices were extremely reasonable and they finished everything according to their plan. Most of the cabinets were done by hand and the doors were brought to their shop to get sprayed. We have a very large kitchen and were very pleased at their professionalism that we have referred his company to several other friends.

Fernando came out and met me to give me an estimate. He then followed up with a written estimate 5 days later. I negotiated the price with him and hired him at the end of Sept. — all the while letting him know I wanted to get the job done within 6 weeks (by Nov. 5^th). This was follwed by radio silence. As we got closer to November I emailed him. No response. Nov. 5 came and went. Left a voicemail — no response. Finally I called him a week before Thanksgiving on the cell and got him live. He told me that he couldn’t promise a date for me to get it done, but that it would be next. At this point I was fed up. He wasn’t the cheapest option and he certainly wasn’t the most responsive. So I never did end up having him do the paint job. Too frustrating an experience.

We recently hired Fernando and his crew to repaint all the interior of our newly purchased home. This included all the walls, baseboards in three rooms, kitchen cabinets as well as addition of crown moldings to three rooms. The job took a little longer than we anticipated, but Fernando and his crew did a fantastic job. I will definitely hire them again in the future.

We have a two story home with wood siding. We have lived here long enough to have had the house painted a few times. Our old favorite retired so we set out to get the best painters available. He got quotes and looked at each contractor’s jobs. Every one of Fernando the Neat’s jobs looked perfect. Their crews attention to detail was
absolutely second to none. They managed to solve some cosmetic problems where no one else could. They are by far the BEST we have ever hired. We had to wait for them to be able to start work. We feel that they were well worth the wait.

Thanks to Unilocal,we found Fernando the Neat and contacted them about flattening the walls and repainting our kitchen and dining room, something we had wanted to do for over ten years but had put off doing because there was a lot of detail work included and I worried that it would be a huge hassle to get done. (I hate having work done on the house, especially if it takes more than one day. Bad experiences in the past, definitely not the case with Fernando and his crew.)
Fernando came by, right on time when he said he would be there (which is sadly so unusual for contractors and made me very happy).
He listened to everything I wanted, took measurements, wrote notes, and had a quote back to us within the day. The quote was quite reasonable so we put it on the calendar.
The guys showed up when they said they would and were absolutely great. Really nice guys, who did a fantastic job flattening the walls and keeping the dust down to a minimum when they sanded the newly plastered walls to give us a nice flat finish. Every day, when they left, the place was cleaned up as much as they reasonably could, so I didn’t feel as if I was living in a construction zone.
At our request, Fernando made some suggestions about the colors we were debating about. They also sponged one end-​wall in the dining room, also with color suggestions from Fernando, and we both absolutely love how it looks.
The kitchen looks pretty much how it did before, except now the walls are flattened (not the skip-​coat we had before) and the paint is fresh. We really didn’t change much in the kitchen, especially since we were going with the same color we had before.
But the dining room is totally new to us thanks to the work done by Fernando’s crew. The cabinets, with mostly glass doors, were repainted inside and out, the walls and ceiling were flattened and repainted with completely new colors, the trim was repainted, etc. It’s a whole new look and we love it.
This review is six months late (the work was done early 2013), but only because I procrastinated.
These are now my two favorite rooms in the house, thanks to Fernando and all the guys, who did a fantastic job. We plan to use them again, when I quit further procrastinating and finally schedule getting the exterior painted.

Our experience with this Painting company:
1. Estimate came in way higher than other contractors. He promised us his work would be better quality and we trusted him, based on Unilocal reviews, and thus hired him
2. He confirmed he will start the project 2 weeks later and will send a contract prior to the start date
3. We never received a contract and called him 2 days prior to start date, he said he will send us contract the following morning
4. We still received nothing the day before the start date, we text and called him with no response. Finally 9pm, he called us to say he cannot start tomorrow and the project needs to be delayed. Five minutes later he made a second call and said he actually has no time to do this project and is cancelling this project.
We had planned our schedule around the painting project and he completely ruined our schedule. But in the end we were very happy we did not work with this company because we hired another team of painters referred from co-​workers who were honest, extremely skillful, and reasonable priced.
Hope this review will help fellow Unilocalers in making their decisions.

Fernando and team just completed painting the exterior of my home, and they have inspired me to finally do my first Unilocal post! Our house was in serious need of a paint job, with bits of wood rotted out, rust showing through old paint from nail heads, old paint dried and chipping, new wood needing installation, etc… There were many small details to get right. Early in the process Fernando warmly, calmly, and confidently reassured me that that it would all get done just right, and that is exactly what happened. I highly recommend his services for exterior painting, and based on the neatness of the site afterwords I’ll definitely invite him back for interior work.
Great work!

Yet again, 5 of 5 stars for Fernando the Neat Painting and Decorating. The mission? Paint our newly installed redwood fence in the back yard. The redwood has beautiful grain and patterns in the wood. While it is a shame to cover it with paint, it does need to be painted. The solution? Fernando recommended Benjamin Moore’s Arborcoat Acrylic Stain. Are these guys neat? Oh yes! A crew of two sprayed two coats. However, one person was the sprayer and the second used a cardboard shield to prevent paint from escaping onto our trees or plants or dirt. Wow! They’re neat even in the backyard! The stain beautifully covered the wood soaking in enough that the texture of the wood’s grain and patterns still show. How truly beautiful!
Highly recommended! Yes, of course, they will continue to get all of our painting jobs.

Fernando and his team did the exterior of our house just this last week, and we’re very happy with the results. Fernando is a good person to work with, who was flexible with us and responsive, and was a good partner in this project for us.
In addition to painting, we also asked Fernando to clean up some small things around our exterior, like deadwood and a loose gutter, and he had no problem doing this for us.
Fernando, who has been in the business for 25+ years, got his hands dirty when he needed to do the job just right. He didn’t cut any corners, and the job shows this. I would definitely recommend Fernando, and plan on using him for future projects.

We contracted with Fernando the Great for exterior painting of our home. The existing paint was 18 years old and wood siding was in very poor shape. Fernando’s bid was competitive and he provided an outstanding crew of experienced painters. Surface preparation and repair as well as paint application were all excellent. Close attention was paid to details and site clean-​up was accomplished daily and on job completion. All work was completed within the originally scheduled time period. The quality of the finished project far exceeded our expectations and we consider Fernando the Neat an outstanding painting contractor.

I am the Executor for my aunt’s estate. We had 7 homes on the Peninsula in the estate. Many were previous rentals. I engaged Fernando’s team to recondition all 7 homes. Fernando took the bull by the horns and not only did an outstanding job, on budget and on time. His team was able to think on its feet and keep things moving even when challenges presented themselves. The tasks involved went well beyond painting and decorating. All 7 of the houses have now successfully been completed and sold in less than 10 months.
I simply could not have done this without Fernando. He and his team made it happen and I simply cannot recommend him highly enough.

Fernando, Hugo and crew just completed another project at our home. This time they finished our new custom-​built cabinets (see my review for Creative Cabinets — San Carlos). This was a job that took an expert to do right — sanding, filling nail holes and spraying multiple coats of «lacquer» finish. The finish product is an incredible smooth, beautiful and durable surface (or as my daughter says, «as smooth as a baby’s skin»!). My kitchen looks fabulous!