Painting costs being checked in O’Hare sound program test

SHARE Painting costs being checked in O’Hare sound program test
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Homeowner Blanche Richter called the nearly $5,000 the city was charged to paint her roughly 15-foot by 15-foot living room “ridiculous.” | Tim Boyle/For the Sun-Times

When Chicago aviation officials signed up homeowners to take part in their test program for sound-insulating historic properties, they added a special “participation incentive” — free painting of the ceiling and walls in any room touched by insulation work.

But city officials now say that won’t be the case when they move forward with plans to insulate as many as 167 more historic homes. Instead, contractors will repaint only the areas they deconstruct and rebuild, as they’ve done in the past.

The final decision to scale back the painting came after the Chicago Sun-Times asked city officials about painting costs two homeowners in the program called “ridiculous.” Officials said they’d been considering doing so before the newspaper began questioning the charges.

One nearly $5,000 tab to paint a living room was a shocker, the homeowner said, particularly because city paperwork reflected far more square feet painted than measurements taken by both a Sun-Times reporter and the homeowner could establish.

“Whose chain are they yanking? Seriously?” Wood Dale homeowner Blanche Richter asked about various painting bills submitted for work at her house, at the rate of $3.40 per square foot of surface painted.

As is normally the case, auditors are “checking all the math to make sure the quantities add up and that all the calculations are correct,” said Aaron Frame, deputy commissioner of environment for the Chicago Department of Aviation.

Richter said she’s “appalled” and “shocked” at the $4,999.97 tab to paint her roughly 15-foot by 15-foot living room with a 9-foot-high ceiling.

Painters left three primer-colored splotches on her living room wall, she said, as well as paint blobs on her 1877-era wooden kitchen floor, baseboards and ceiling fan.

Blinderman Construction, the city’s general contractor on the test program, hired the subcontractor that did the painting work. City records indicate the company painted 1,471 square feet in Richter’s living room. But Sun-Times’ measurements put the total at about 770 square feet, and that assumed workers painted four solid walls, including all window glass, as well as the ceiling.

“It’s mystifying,’’ Richter said. “This is ridiculous. There’s nothing unusual about the living room.”

Spot checks of one room in each of the other two properties in the test program – a laundry room and bedroom – produced square footage that was 282 feet and 123 feet less, respectively, than totals on bills submitted to the aviation department, the Sun-Times found.

Three primer-colored splotches are now visible in Blanche Richter’s Wood Dale living room after a paint job that cost the city nearly $5,000. | Tim Boyle/For the Sun-Times

Three primer-colored splotches are now visible in Blanche Richter’s Wood Dale living room after a paint job that cost the city nearly $5,000. | Tim Boyle/For the Sun-Times

The Sun-Times’ laundry room square footage was based on four solid walls. The bedroom total subtracted what the homeowner said was an unpainted bedroom door, a mirrored closet door and three new windows.

In Bensenville, Richard Rebmann called the more than $24,000 bill to paint 10 areas — rooms, baths, entries and stairways — in his circa 1904 house “entirely too expensive.”

Workers painted only the duplex’s ground-floor unit before Rebmann’s tenant, Nicholas Kelly — a professional painter — got so upset he agreed to paint the upper unit himself.

One small bathroom was left with “paint everywhere,” including the floor and shower curtain, Kelly said. On a living room and bedroom wall, brush strokes are now visible and tiny holes pock the surface. In one spot, mesh patching can be detected.

Kelly’s reaction to the painters’ work? “I ran them out of my house,” he said.

City officials defended the city’s paint-measurement process and questioned Sun-Times’ measurements.

At each site, Aviation Department spokesman Owen Kilmer said, Blinderman staff measured the room surface painted in the presence of a project inspector provided by Cotter Consulting, which manages the department’s Residential Sound Insulation Program.

Peeling paint in the bathroom of the duplex where Nicholas Kelly lives in Bensenville. | Tim Boyle/For the Sun-Times

Peeling paint in the bathroom of the duplex where Nicholas Kelly lives in Bensenville. | Tim Boyle/For the Sun-Times

Both parties agreed on a number, Kilmer said, and the Cotter project inspector gave it to a Cotter project manager who wrote the number on “field orders” the Sun-Times obtained under state open-records law.

Asked to explain possible square-footage discrepancies, city officials said all numbers are being reviewed as part of the Cotter audit.

Asked how auditors would know if field orders contained incorrect square feet, Frame said: “The auditor wouldn’t know. They are relying on the field staff and the contractor that did the measurements in the first place to come to consensus that the quantities are correct.”

But if auditors detect a paperwork “discrepancy,” Frame said, they will ask the Cotter field team to contact Blinderman and resolve it, possibly by re-measuring.

Cotter and Blinderman officials referred the Sun-Times’ questions to the aviation department’s communications office.

The owner of painting subcontractor Jewel Construction said any beef about the painting was news to her. “Why didn’t they say it while it was going on?” Jewel owner Ozella Stewart asked.

She asked the Sun-Times to email her a list of issues residents had with the painting work, which a reporter did. Stewart didn’t return repeated phone calls after that.

Kilmer said the Aviation Department has received no complaints about the historic house pilot, and homeowners were encouraged in face-to-face meetings to call the contractor or the department’s residential sound insulation office with concerns.

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