Nov 02, 2012 12:29 PM
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We decided to have our twin bungalow painted through Asian Paints Home Solutions and were considering using Royale only for the living room and dining area, and using Premium emulsion for the rest of the house. We were impressed by the sales talk and decided to go in for Royale for the entire house since the price difference also was not very significant. The contract was given to Shree Enterprises.
Our nightmare began about a week after the painting started. Two of the bedrooms had been 'completed' and handed over to us and work had started on the remaining areas. We realized that there were numerous problems.
a. patches of previous paint seen through,
b. areas where white of the putty was visible,
c. rough areas where sanding was not done properly,
d. flowing drops on the walls that had dried up,
e. darker colour all along the margin of the wall and ceiling with a wavy margin,
f. Small patches on the walls where the painters had done touch-ups
Name any painting blunder, and it was there for us to see on the walls. We brought this to the notice of the representatives from Asian Paints. They assured us that the finish in the remaining portions of the house would be perfect, and that rework would be done in the two bedrooms. The third bedroom which was to be done perfectly ended up with a new problem. Apart from the problems in the previous bedrooms, this room had an entire wall filled with pinholes, which we thought were due to airpockets.
Meanwhile, our patience was running out. We had been given an estimate of 25 days, a lot of rework had to be done in the 3 bedrooms, and this constituted less than 40% of the house. We got in touch with the Customer Services Officer, who asked for the entire third bedroom to be redone to remove the pinholes. Two days were spent on rework, but the pinholes continue to be there. As a last resort, we sent an e mail to the Pune unit head of Asian Paints expecting some sort of redressal. It seems like the only redressal they can offer is rework, and once rework is done, there is no other solution even if the problem persists. It took another 3 days to redo the master bedroom - many of the problems got sorted out, but now we have a wall with many ruptured bubbles, which is apparently due to too many coats of paint on the wall. During the time all this rework was being carried out, our entire living and dining area was in an unusable state as all the furniture was covered and putty application had begun. In addition, we had to empty each of the bedrooms again for rework. The guest bedroom has started revealing fine lines, which we believe are cracks opening up. But, the Asian Paints guys claim that they are not cracks. They are just areas where there were cracks underneath since you cannot feel the edges. We are not convinced since we can see breaks in the continuity of the paint. Even if they are not cracks, are breaks in the continuity of paint acceptable. Don't we expect our houses to remain blemish free atleast for a few months after spending premium amounts?
The painting work is supposed to be getting over today. If I say that we are disappointed, it would be an understatement. We had contemplated stopping work seeing the finish in the three bedrooms, but it so happened that the remaining 60% of the house was being worked on at the same time. We are not sure whether this was due to bad planning or part of their strategy. If we would have asked them to discontinue, we would have been left with putty on all the remaining walls. We realized that many of the problems were due to bad wall preparation, and the same people had prepared the walls in the entire house. The painters were changed due to our complaints, but now we have other walls too with pinholes.
We were told by Asian Paints that the pinhholes could be due to deficiency in the quality of putty. Whether they are due to the putty or bad workmanship, Asian Paints should take responsibility instead of washing their hands off. The paint seems to be very unforgiving. It is probably capable of giving a great finish if you have perfect walls and perfect painters. I doubt whether this can be a reality in India after the one month ordeal that we have been through. If the quality that we have seen is what can be delivered by the so called trained painters of Asian Paints, only God can help those who hire local painters to use this product. We are so frustrated that we decided to cancel painting of our kitchen since that was the only area that was untouched. We also cancelled the stenciling we had planned to get done in the living room.
