P B Decorating, Inc.

Don’t know how he stays in business. In April we scheduled a «one room job»
he claimed the soonest he could come would be in June. I confirmed the date with him then and took a day off work and he never showed up. We had prepped the room, removing every thing from the walls and spackling and sanding and purchased the paint, its been this way for six months now. He then claimed he never got the email that time, even though he had received every other one I had sent. Not knowing, I gave him the benefit of the doubt an rescheduled. He then claimed nothing was available until September. I made it very clear I would not take another day off and he would need to come in the afternoon. He agreed to the time, only to call two days before the date to say he «starts work at 7:30a» and makes no exceptions.
He cancelled the job. Overall, one of the most unpleasant business experiences my wife and I have had. Don’t do business with him, nothing but problems for us!

5 year’s after living in our house my wife wanted to repaint the living room and I had to take the crown molding off because certain areas was about ½″ away from the ceiling. I also had to take half the wall down between the kitchen and living room because what ever carpenter did the work before used short pieces of wood which made that wavy as an ocean so I repaired that the correct way. By the time I took the crown molding off the paint peeled off the drywall without damaging the drywall and it even looked like I just hung up new drywall the paint was coming off in big sheets all due to pure prepping and cheap paint YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR. So then I ended up re-​drywalling a ¹⁄₃ of my house. While this was going on I had a leak in my garage ceiling below our bathroom and I thought it was leaking from the toilet or bathtub drain. So when I took the ceiling down I found out that the water was coming from the HVAC Vent, I’ve never seen that in the 35 year’s of me being in business. At this point I called my insurance company out because it was covered under my insurance and they called or Service Master that’s a story for another day but to keep it short I wouldn’t recommend them to do work on a dog house. So they were suppose to repair the problem and replace anything that needed replacing. It turns out that the water went undetected for so long that mold had started growing. Then they had to tear up the carpeting and drywall and after they took care of the mold they stopped showing up so I ended up having to do the drywalling taping to get it ready for paint. I had called 3 companies out for an estimate and P B DECORATING was one of the companies that came out for the estimate. With all the companies that came out they all said that they use a certain brand of paint which I didn’t care and I knew that Benjamin Moore paint is very good paint. So Paul and I set a date to start the work but it turned out that I had to tear more drywall down because there were hidden electrical boxes that the original owner had buried that I had to relocate. So I had to call Paul up and let him know that I wouldn’t be ready for him to do his work because it was going to take me longer than expected to finish everything. So when Paul came out to do the work with his crew he and his men were all professional, pleasant to work with and had no problem working with any of them cleaned up and even vacuumed at the end of every day. He didn’t even ask for a deposit for the job and he bought the paint and he said that I could just pay him when he was done with the job. Well it turned out that with all the extra work we had to do all our furniture, bedding and clothes were in the living room so he couldn’t do the whole job and he had to wait until we moved the future and clothes upstairs into the bedroom to give him more room for him to move around in the living room. He and his crew caulked any little gaps and filled all the nail holes. When I started putting things back in my daughter’s room it turned out that the darker color paint that my daughter originally had on her bedroom wall’s didn’t completely cover with the new lighter color that Paul primed and painted and Paul went out bought another gallon of paint and repainted her room without charging me for the paint or the labor. Then Paul continued with his crew to paint the foyer, living room and a section of the basement. Paul and his crew showed up every day that he said he would be here and came at the exact time in the morning that he said that he would be. He would cover the floor and furniture up before he started he never worked by the clock he would stay until he got what he needed to get done and as I said everyday he would pick up the blankets and sweep and vacuum. SO I DON’T KNOW WHO IS WRITING THESE BOGUS REVIEWS BUT THEY ARE ALL LIES OR YOU HAVE THE WRONG COMPANY. FROM WHAT I READ THAT IS NOT THE PAUL AND HIS COMPANY THAT I KNOW OFF AND THIS IS A REAL TRUE REVIEW NOT LIKE THOSE OTHER REVIEWS THAT ARE SOUNDING LIKE ARE BOGUS. I’D RECOMMEND PAUL AND P B DECORATING TO ANY BODY WITHOUT ANY HESITATION AND WHEN HE EVEN DID THE WORK FOR ME HE WAS SO TRUST WORTHY THAT I WAS ABLE TO LEAVE HIM TO GET THE JOB DONE. I HOPE WHO EVER IS WRITING THESE REVIEWS THAT THEY GET WHAT THEY DESERVE FOR WRITING FALSE REVIEWS BECAUSE WITH ME KNOWING PAUL AND HIS WORK ETHIC THAT THE REST OF THESE REVIEWS HAVE TO BE BOGUS BECAUSE THIS IS THE REAL REVIEW ABOUT PAUL AND P B DECORATING…

Stay as far away from this scammer as possible! He collected my money from Living Social PRIOR to doing the job. He asked for the voucher number months before performing the work. After multiple emails and phone calls, he scheduled my job almost two months later.
Paul then arrived over an hour late and attempted to get out of doing the job by asking to see what paint we had. This was in the foyer, before bringing in as much as a brush or tarp. The paint was from Menard’s. Paul said he couldn’t do the job and he needed to leave because he wouldn’t work with anything else but Benjamin Moore paint and that all paint sold at Home Depot and Menard’s is junk and he refused to paint with it.
He then said it was on the voucher that I purchased from Living Social – problem was, it wasn’t. The voucher said this was his «preferred» paint; but, nowhere on the voucher did it say that he will leave the job and keep your money if you didn’t provide him with Benjamin Moore paint.
I asked him, since we waited for him to show up for over an hour, could he wait for us while we ran out to get his «preferred» paint; after all it was lunch time. He could eat lunch while we complied with his demand for Benjamin Moore paint. He said– No he wouldn’t wait for us that we forfeited the voucher by not having the paint he wanted and he was leaving.
He then asked to look at the room (I guess to form another excuse to not do the job). The voucher said it was valid for a 12X12 room. He measured the room at a second attempt to get out of doing the job. The room measured 12.6 by 11.6 –a perfect 12X12 room. He then said because one of the walls went over 12 feet he couldn’t do the work and I would lose the money I paid for the voucher – even though the other wall was short six inches. I told him he could paint just up to the 12 feet marker and that we would finish the extra 6 inches if that was really his problem. He then stormed out saying he wouldn’t do the job without Benjamin Moore paint.
It is sad that this man collects money from people and attempts to find any excuse not to do the job. Funny thing is he continues to get away with it as evidenced by all the reviews on Unilocal and the fact that the deal sites keep running his ad.
I contacted Living Social and asked them to make the fine print clearer so as not to give this man an excuse to con more people out of their money-i.e. painter will not perform job without Benjamin Moore paint or unless the room exactly measures 12X12.
He never did the job and probably still was paid by Living Social.
I am curious to see if Living Social changes their fine print to protect their customers. They did offer me a site credit for all the drama. But, I am still left with an unpainted room, a day off work and a lot of unnecessary negativity – not worth it!
I wrote this review hoping others don’t go through this. It’s sad to me that people make money this way. Whatever happened to doing a great job and getting more work from your client and future referrals?

Do not hire Paul, as other reviewers have vehemently stated, he is a scam artist. We hired him to paint a room by purchasing his amazon voucher, and after being difficult to nail down for a date, he finally showed up and refused to use the paint we had purchased. His amazon voucher stated a recommended paint (brands who likely give him a kickback) but did not state that he required any specific paint be used. Paul showed up and was extremely rude, unprofessional and confrontational. He left without having painted the room so I cannot attest to the poor work but I’ve never encountered such a deplorable man in my life. Further, he had gone into the amazon voucher and marked it as used 2 weeks prior to the appointment so that he could get paid for work that hadn’t been done. He is simply a shady, unethical guy.
I should have done my Unilocal research beforehand, and have learned my lesson the hard way.
Pau, I invite you to comment on this review and make ridiculous claims about how it’s false and I’m harassing you as seems to be your M.O., but I have full proof of the truth and validity of my claims. Far beyond Unilocal I am contacting amazon, living social, and the BBB about your shady business practices.

My home looks great, thanks to this painter. I’ve hired him twice to do a variety of rooms and Paul has been professional and very efficient. I’ve referred two others to him and both were very happy with his work. His process is very quick: he’ll come out and measure the rooms to be painted and pick up the paint color info. He sent me an estimate, via email, within a day. We then set up the appt and he was here on time, along with a second painter, and the work they did was excellent. They put all my furniture back in place and actually vacuumed before they left. I’d highly recommend this company.

I have to agree with the other reviewers about this business, unfortunately. Paul is an under-​handed scam artist, to say the least.
I bought a Living Social to paint a one room apartment in July of last year. Scheduling was a nightmare– I must have called and emailed a grand total of 3 dozen times in order to secure an appointment. Paul never responded to his emails and kept giving me vague dates on the phone (e.g. «sometime next month»).
I finally secured a date/​time last month and gave him my credit card number to purchase 1 gallon of paint, since he insisted that he could only use 2 brands of paint. Luckily, I asked for the receipt because I found out that he had charged additional painting supplies to my card without prior authorization. Although, I decided not to file a police report I did want to warn any other potential customers to get a receipt!!!
I wanted them to start around 7:30−8am, but he insisted on starting at 6:30am, so I complied, just to get it over with. He comes in, takes a couple of measurements and tells me that it will cost over $ 200 to paint my 4×10 storage closet and that he would no longer accept my voucher!!! Why did that not come up in the 3 dozen emails and phone calls we had leading up to this?
Anyways, long story short. Living Social refunded me my voucher, the cost of the paint and gave me an extra living social voucher as an apology for having had to deal with this clown.

TERRIBLE! DO NOT HIRE!!! BUYER BEWARE!!! What the other one star reviewer says is TRUE. Bought a deal through Fox Valley deals — took him three months to come out to do the work… then when he FINALLY got around to coming out he claimed that the PAINT was not included in the work! We printed out the offer and the email that came with it and there was NOTHING in the fine print about charging extra for the paint. So, while he is at our house he asked for an additional $ 50 (for $ 20 worth of stain) to do the work, after we already paid $ 99 to Fox Valley deals for the voucher. AVOID AVOID AVOID — do NOT give this man your business!!!
UPDATE: We tried to resolve this with PB Decorating — by asking for a refund. This is the response we received from the company. Two things I would like to note: 1. Fox Valley Deals did not note that stain was not included in this deal 2. Fox Valley Deal also worked with us, giving us a credit for what we paid to purchase the voucher because of the way we were treated by PB Decorating.
Here is the UNPROFESSIONAL note (to say it nicely) that the owner of PB Decorated sent us after we complained about their misrepresentation.
«How does it feel that you were wrong the stain is not included in the Fox Valley Deal. I told you would not get your $ 100 refunded because you were wrong. Also stain is $ 45 plus tax per gallon for Benjamin Moore Stain that will last you about 5years. I almost forgot how cheap you are you shop at Home Depot Stain and buy their $ 20 stain that only protects your wood for 1 month. Good luck and keep wasting your money on cheap stain. Maybe one day you will learn to be smarter.
Thank you,
Paul Binkowski
P.B. Decorating Inc.»
As for Paul’s comments below, we have a copy of his original email on file that was sent to my husband directly — which I copied and pasted from, if anyone would like a forward of it, inbox me directly. As well as the correspondence from Fox Valley Deals