J & A Pretty Nails

This place is the absolute worst. It is extremely dirty. The workers rush through your nails, she barely buffed and filed my nails. I had to ask her to go over them because she was moving so fast.
The nail color I chose was thick and instead of her putting thinner in the bottle to loosen it up she just proceeded to put thick polish on my nails. When I asked her to put some thinner in the bottle she acted like I was crazy, then she blamed the nail polish, WHAT?
I will never go back. Once was enough for me. This is a very cheap place but it is not worth it, GO SOMEWHERE ELSE!!!

First of all, it’s Sunday but only three nail technicians were available for customers so imagine the wait time. The location was less than impressive and in serious need of repairs/​upgrades/​renovation. It looks like a lot of patchwork and poor maintenance. If I was unaccompanied, I would have walked out based on those two points.
Thankfully, my nail technician, Sally, was worth the wait time. I guess that’s why she’s the preferred technician. I was appalled by the tone used by another employee to a customer. Very short, frustrated, unprofessional.
I was pleased with my manicure and pedicure. One week later, my feet are baby bottom smooth. Total cost was about $ 19 + tip.

This place is pretty dingy overall. The floors need to be redone, the carpet needs to be cleaned… It’s not very inviting. The massage chairs for the pedicure don’t work (none of them). The polish color options are limited and the brands used are not ones I have ever seen in other salons (so I’m guessing it’s cheap). I got a pedi only and it was the most basic pedi of my life. They probably should have called it a polish change. They do very little to clean your feet up overall. I guess that’s what you get for $ 13. The good parts were that it was super fast (makes sense since they did barely anything besides change my polish) and there is an overhead fan above the pedi chairs. This was nice because it provided some circulation and I didn’t feel like I was inhaling a bunch of chemicals. The Polish looked fine, but I’m not sure how you can really mess that up. If you are looking for cheap and fast, this place could do the trick but if you’re looking for quality and a relaxing experience, I wouldn’t waste your time here.

When you only spend $ 6 on a manicure your expectations really should be low. I mean, let’s be real. If you do that, this is not a bad place to visit.
I had recently dropped $ 50 on a luxurious mani-​pedi complete with free cosmopolitans at Dashing Diva last week. So my cuticles were in good shape, but I needed a color change. So as I walked down Lawrence St. I dropped into J.A. Nails since it was much less crowded than the narrow nail salon across the street. It was pleasantly, but sparsely decorated with little red Chinese lanterns and the carpet was worn down and held together in places by duct tape.
The expected acrylic fumes weren’t too bad, so I decided to pick out a color. All the technicians wore masks so it was hard to understand anyone. I didn’t recognize a single brand name of the nail polishes on the wall. But I did find a color that matched my outfit. They took me right away. I was glad that my technician asked me to wash my hands. I hope she did the same because everything around her looked pretty grungy. Like no one really ever did a thorough cleaning of anything there. I was so glad I was not getting an actual manicure when I saw that the nail clipper literally had rust on it. There is no way that things are disinfected here! I mean, how much do clippers cost? A dollar? I didn’t even see disinfecting solution around.
She used the same clear polish for both my base coat and top coat. It put enough of a shine on the nearly mat-​looking color on my nails. The color dried a bit unevenly on a couple of nails but I barely noticed it until much later. I was in and out of the chair in just over 5 minutes. I had to watch carefully because she wasn’t volunteering to correct any mistakes that I didn’t catch and speak up about. To be on the safe side I held the tip until the end. There was duct tape on the base of the salon’s one nail dryer (Next to the one gel UV light) and it didn’t blow too enthusiastically. I was ready to get out of there so I asked for drying spray. She laughed. I had to laugh too. What was I thinking?
Bottom line: I am NOT unhappy. I got what I paid for — a quick, effective color change that took less time than it would have on my own. And it was neater than I would have done. If I had bought a bottle of polish it may have cost nearly the same thing. And my office would have smelled like acetone. No frills. Quick, cheap and dirty. That last word will keep me away from the metal objects in the place. But I do say that it’s a great place to get a chip repair done or a color change in record time.

This salon is ok for the location. There were times that I got there before they opened and it was well after the time they were supposed to be opened. I’m a very pickey person when it comes to my nails that it takes a good person to do my nails to satisfaction. The only person left there that did a great job on my nails is Sally. But I have to warn that when things get busy (and they do get busy pretty often do to the location) the work being done does get a little spotty. Overall great spot but to get decent service either show up really early or close to closing.