How to test for presence of the primer or paint

To make it short, not

I hired a guy to fix some window trim around the house, he recommended another guy - painter to repaint the house.
I bought two 5gal buckets of Behr exterior primer and two 5gal buckets of Behr flat paint, both tinted Navajo White. I think this is my possibly second "mistake", should have tinted the primer a slightly different color so I could see the coverage...
Unfortunately I was unable to see when the work was started, only when it's halfdone.
Looking around the edges of the aluminum trim, I see very little "paint" thickness on the surface. According to the painter he has done two coats, i.e. primer and the paint, but he only started on Friday with one helper and it's a barely 1000 sq ft house, one story though.
Is there some distinctive feature of the primer I can test for? Or can I prove there is either primer or paint on the surface?
I know, I should have been there, but the guy started work on Friday without even telling me he has started
I hate to be so paranoid, but I also would hate to have to hunt the guy down if the paint starts peeling off shortly...

Thanks in advance!

 

What's the square footage of the paintable area? Painting a one story house can move very quickly. Did they paint Saturday & Sunday too? I think that 2 painters could paint one coat of primer & one coat of paint, if they worked through the weekend. Have you looked at how much paint is left? Where are all the buckets that you bought?

 

Generally primer doesn't tint the same as the finish paint so there should be a slight difference in color. There might also be a slight sheen difference. As Pulpo said, where are the buckets of primer and paint? What did you see when the job was half done? How long did it take them to finish? Some paints have a thicker mil coat than others. I'm not very familiar with Behr.

Pro painters are generally quite a bit faster than a diyer. Speed comes with practice and time is money. Some houses are easier/quicker to paint than others.

 

Thank you both!

From what I see all four buckets are empty. That unfortunately does not guarantee that all the primer and paint was actually applied to the house.
They said they painted on Saturday, but weren't there on Monday. It's hard for me to give a somewhat accurate guesstimate of the square footage because of the shape of the roofline. I think that construction type is a bungalow?? I do need to mention that one room addition was recently completely restuccoed on two sides, so that had to take a lot of primer maybe paint too.
I know, my own fault that I wasn't there watching....
Unfortunately my eye is not that trained to pick up on those minute differences in tint and/or sheen to pick what's what

Latest development they just called me and said they need two more gallons of the paint. So I asked them immediately, if they have applied two coats by yesterday, why they are still painting? - received no coherent answer

 

I would assume that by requesting 2 more gallons of finish they meant they had everything painted but a little bit. I'd probably go ahead and get the paint for them and be there to see what they lacked.

Stucco takes more paint than wood. Is the whole body of the house stucco? or just the addition?

 

They may need 2 more gallons of paint for touch-ups. How does the house look? Is there a major improvement? Do you want to post some pics? Maybe we can see something that you missed.

 

Thank you,

Will take some pictures tomorrow morning.
There is stucco at the bottom on foundation, but that was painted probably multiple times before, so it should not take that much to go over it.
Home Depot refused to tint the primer dark color to match the brown stucco and I wanted to be primed, so now I am not sure how many coat of brown paint will it take to cover navajo primer.

 

Instead of trying to reverse engineer the paint job, I would just look at the finished product. Let's see how it looks.

 

I would be concerned if 2 gallons was required for touch up.

Paint doesn't go as far on stucco as it does on smooth wood. While a sealed irregular surface doesn't take as much paint as a raw one, it will take more paint. If the paint is any good, it shouldn't take more than 2 coats to cover the white with the brown.

Most primers only come in one base which limits the amount of colorant that can be added while the finish paints come in multiple bases allowing for darker tints.

 

One or two sections could need a 3rd coat. That's not strange, to me. I do mostly interior painting. The thing that I like about Behr paint is that many times one coat does the trick although I wouldn't expect it when going from brown to white. I don't know if Behr exterior paint is as good as their interior paint. I still would like to see some pics of the finished job. That's the bottom line.