Varsity Painters, Minneapolis Painting Contractors

Joe and his crew are wonderful! They have painted my house twice now and both times have gone above and beyond. I highly recommend them!
9 years ago (19-10-2017)

I used Varsity Painters last fall to paint both outside trim and the inside upper level of my house. The whole process was very smooth. Joe, the owner, was great. He provided a very straight forward bid and offered helpful suggestions on color and other fixes that needed to be made. The crew did a beautiful job and always cleaned up after themselves. I would absolutely use them again for future projects.
10 years ago (30-03-2016)

We received about 7 bids to paint our home. Varsity Painters was nowhere near the cheapest, but, they also were not the most expensive. We ended up going with them primarily to avoid too many problems and, given the investment, we wanted to make sure we were not going with the cheapest option. They also offered the longest warranty which was a plus, but, in the scheme of things one extra year in the context of a paint job is probably not a deal-shifter. The experience was a mixed bag. I can start with the good. First, we got the sense from the supervisor that he wanted the project to be done right, that we would do what was necessary to make us happy, and when we were not happy, he volunteered some concessions. To that end, they spent almost a day and half fixing problems. At the end, we think the house looks good. Some other positives were we never had a problem with the office staff. The bid was straight forward and the owner friendly (though, we never saw him again after the original bid). The supervisor was responsive to emails, they provided some insight on colors, and when some lines got crossed on colors they never complained about having to redo a small section of the house. Now the bad. And, I think it starts with the fact they had to spend a day and a half fixing things. There seemed to be a large disconnect between the quality promised (and I think also the quality expected by the supervisor) and what the crew actually delivered. When they were supervised, they did good work. When they were not, it was shoddy. The problems likely occurred as a result of the supervisor not being on site most of the time. Some examples include: - They painted portions of the house in cool, damp (and sometimes rainy) weather. That seems like a bad idea. - There were countless missed spots, most obvious, some were just large portions of the house. - Although we paid for two coats, sections of the house clearly either did not get two coats or the coats were applied way too close to each other (sides of the house would be considered done by them (start to end of "second coat") in less than 3 hours. - We were often cleaning up after them, particularly if they had to come indoors - Detail work was often sloppy (bad lines, splotches of paint on various surfaces, large chunks of fresh paint pulled off by the tape, spray paint would end up on non-painted surfaces, debris sprayed into the paint that would ultimately just flake off, etc.) - The crew sometimes were less than truthful -- for example, they claimed sections had been painted twice when they clearly had not and when mistakes were pointed out, their attempts to fix those mistakes were not impressive. If it ended there--which, according to crew, they probably thought it should have, this would be an easy one-star review. For the price we paid, it was embarrassing. And, as I mentioned earlier, we got the sense from the supervisor that he too was a bit embarrassed. He stayed on site most of the day and a half the crew fixed many of the above mistakes and helped ensure the job was done right. He also found mistakes we did not see and fixes those as well. Whereas the crew would fix mistakes by simply blotching on some paint and calling it good, the supervisor had them redo it (sometimes entire sections of the house) when the quality was not adequate. When the fixing causes different problems, he was willing to fix those as well. If your project is supervised and you are diligent about spotting mistakes, your project will probably turn out well. If not, expect low quality for a high price.
16 years ago (19-05-2011)