My Horrible Experience with an Auto Body Painter

I contracted a guy to paint my arcade cabinet in the beginning of January 2016. He said it would take 3 days tops. He dodged me for 3 weeks until I called the police, and they made him give me my unfinished/totally botched cabinet back.

Here is what the cabinet looked like before it was sent to the painter:

The cabinet breaks down into 3 main parts. The Arch, the Base and the Control Panel. Here you can see the Base and the Arch. There are extra parts in the back that just needed to be painted flat black. Those are done.

Here is the Arch attached to the Base WITHOUT the monitor/speaker bezel in place. You can also see my other arcade cabinets already painted in the background.

I had started to work on sealing the cut/rough edges of the control panel with bondo. I did an OK job, but felt that a professional should finish it up and paint it with the right paints and equipment. Ha!

Here are examples of what the cabinet was SUPPOSED TO LOOK LIKE after being sent off to a local painter:

I like this example except that I didn't want red ALL the way around the control panel like this. Just the sides. Also, this is a different version of the arcade cabinet. It has a black side piece that does not exist on the version I have.

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In this example, the pin-striping is unnecessary, but the rest looks good.

In this example, you can see a two tone paint job. On my version, the white parts would have been red. Ignore the Plexiglas parts. I have those already done.

And here's the current state of the cabinet... which is what I got back from an idiot painter in Hutto:

You can't really tell how BAD the paint job is here.

Notice that he didn't seal the cut/rough edges so all the paint soaked through. Terrible.

Another example of why you NEED to seal the cut/rough edges with wood filler or bondo or something BEFORE priming.

More non-sealed edges.

The Arch separated from the Base.

This should have been red/black on the back too. This guy just didn't care at all.

There is so much dust on it from the guy ignoring it for 3 weeks.

It almost looks decent here. It's not. Trust me.

Another deceptively "clean" shot.

You can see some scratches in this picture.

The bottom of the Control Panel wasn't even primed correctly. I would be ashamed if I had done this.

The bottom of the Control Panel with the access panel removed.

The only reason THIS primed part looks decent is because *I* bondo'd it BEFORE I gave it to the painter. It's the only part that looks like it came out smooth prior to painting.

More dust from weeks of neglect.

More rough edges. The yellow lines are due to sunlight. 

The arch part scratched the side all up. Those lines are NOT sunlight. Those are spray marks from who knows what he was doing..

More scratches and more spray marks. Just terrible workmanship.

Even the "good" side looks really really bad. Not smooth at all.

NO attempt to do a good job. The masking wasn't done right either.

Again, you have to SEAL the rough edges first! C'mon!

And another pic of the part that I sealed with bondo before he primed it. He never got around to painting it.