A disgruntled painter and decorator took revenge on the person who allegedly refused to pay him the sum they had a greed on by painting an angry graffiti message on the building he had painted.
People passing by the former North Star Club building in Bolsover, England last month were surprised to see a peculiar message painted in black over the cream exterior – “Want your house painting? Don’t be like Terry, pay the bill! Now you will!” It was the work of Dean Reeves, a local painter and decorator who claims that he was hired to paint the building, which is being converted into flats, for a fee, but that the client refused to pay him £500 ($645) of what he was owed. Sick of being asked to do jobs that he hadn’t initially agreed to in order to get paid, the 50-year-old painter decided to teach his client a lesson.
“I gave him a quote for the job and he said he would ‘ping me the money straight away’, but he tried to change the job halfway through,” Dean Reeves told SWNS.
He changed the job, kept asking me to extra work. He said there was a number of jobs I needed to do before I would get paid. I did seven days hard work on it. I didn’t have lunch breaks, I worked hard all week to get it done. He kept saying, ‘I’ll pay you tomorrow,’ but tomorrow never came.”
The painter added that his client, Terry Taylor, agreed to pay him the money he was owed if he agreed to give the back of the building another coat of paint. That wasn’t mentioned in their original agreement, but on January 14 he did it anyway. But when he asked Taylor when he would get paid, the was told that he wouldn’t receive a dime until he painted the fascias as well. That’s when Reeves realized that he was never getting paid the full fee, and decided to take revenge on his deceitful client.
“It was my first job back since Christmas, I have bills to pay and need to make money,” the painter said. “It just got too much and I wanted to prove the point. I don’t regret it and I’d do it again if I had to. I was never going to get paid, but I wanted to make sure he had to pay something to get it cleared off.”
Terry, on the other hand, denies the painter’s version and claims that he had every intention of paying the full fee, had he finished the work they had agreed upon. Now he plans to press criminal charges against Reeves, and claims the graffiti message doesn’t bother him at all.
“I’ve spoken to police now and they will be looking to arrest him. He’s going to be done for criminal damage,” Taylor told reporters. I found out about it last night but I’m completely unbothered. It’s just paint, the idiot. I’m the boss, so I’m just going to go round and paint over it. Do his job for him. It’ll be done by the end of the day. I don’t understand why you would waste your time painting that nonsense instead of doing your job, when in that time you could have finished it.”
Derbyshire police confirmed that they had received a call about a local property with a graffiti message painted on it, and said that they plan on getting in touch with the parties involved to hopefully get the dispute resolved.
