Yes! Omg, drives me crazy. I hail from a family full of professional house painters and this is something I really notice wherever I go.

I once had a tenant who asked for permission to paint a room with a skylight in it. We said OK.

She painted over all the switchplates/outlet covers and up into the skylight -- but only as far as she could reach. The walls inside the skylight were blue on the bottom and white at the top, above a zig-zag pattern of paint roller marks.

That's lazy.

Super lazy.

Even if you are going to paint them, you take it off and do them separately.

And I echo the question what else is the GC cutting corners on?

Wildly lazy.

Yes, very lazy. Just wrong. Remove wall plates and door hardware. Remove or tape off vents.

Do it right.

We specify what we want painted and what we don't. Some of our vent covers are painted so that they blend in better. None of the switchplates are - painted switch plates would get so dirty!

I’d call it a bad painter, regardless of the cause, be it laziness or ignorance.

Absolutely. And I’d wonder what other cheap things your GC is also doing. Taking a switch plate off takes 30 seconds

One hundred percent yes.

Also, paint over my specifically chosen colored/detailed plates and I will cut you. Either take them off first or tape them if you are that bad at cutting.

Unless they assume you’re going to replace all those things anyway, in which case I guess it’s a decent time saver. But if your new stuff is smaller or shaped different than the old, that’s no good.

Hell yes. Lazy, or just bad. At a minimum, everything painted over needs to be replaced, and paint correction may be needed before I’d pay for the work.

Uh yes. But also, it really only matters if you wanted it done or not.

Big time yes.

Spouse and I say yes, our GC says no. What say you, DCUM?