As the old adage goes, if something seems to good to be true it probably is. I work in housing repair and have managed housing repair programs and liasion between staff inspectors and the director. I've evaluated nearly 1,000 properties over the span of my career commercial, residential and multifamily. Likewise, I know what cities will accept or not. Met Dillon and paid 50 bucks for the estimate which is not unusual and not a problem. Then he had me pay $286 deposit. Not typical but certainly not unusual. His wife Sarah handled everything. I checked his references well in advance and everything checked out. I even located his home address which is a rental in Cleveland Heights. I booked the appointment and signed a contract. He showed at 10am on the scheduled day and went to work. I left for work, came home and my steps were done. His line work on the steps was OK though he should've shimmed one or two of the steps which he didn't. Seemed ok, right. Left some mortar caked on the facing but it wasn't bad. Was supposed to grind out bottom joint but didn't do that. Second day, shows up at 10:15 walks upstairs on my carpet with dirty boots and brings up his equipment. I leave for work and come home at noon. His truck is gone and he leaves the house open. I closed the door and go get lunch. He's still not there. I call him, no answer. Wait til 2pm and lock the house up. At 2:45 he calls to say he has to help another crew. He can't finish the job that day because ne needs to build a scaffolding. Didn't he estimate that from day 1? I inspect the roof and find nothing has been done. Zero. And I mean nothing. Meanwhile he begins power washing my steps, a service I didn't ask for. A 1 day job now lingers longer. Now I'm getting nervous because I believe thay I've been duped. Thursday and Friday came and went. Saturday comes around and Dillon shows. On day 5, yes I'm not kidding, he brought a kid with him with scaffold but....they didn't use it. Back to plan A. I watched them trek everything, buckets, tools, dirty boots through my house with no feet coverings not carpet protectors. He also under delivered regarding the chimney cap he promised. He didn't grind out a single joint on the chimney. Instead he picked out the old mortar with a tuckpointing tool and brushed everything else out. Then he merely filled in the holes like a dentist. This is incorrect for a variety of reasons. The old mortar is already weakened by years of weather and is left in place. Cracks start to form along the joint edges. Additionally, the new then doesn't match the old in color. I finally gave up and had him leave to send a partial payment. He worked 2 hours on Saturday total. Now I have to bring someone else on to clean up the mess. Be very careful who you hire and check references. This individual is inexperienced. I'm not sure who trained him to do residential work but I believe he didn't work out. read more

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Dillon deemed nice at first, but he is in way over his head and we are in a much worse place now after hiring him. We are out money, the job was barely started and never completed and the little bit of work he did do needs to be fixed. In addition, he has just walked away with good-faith money we gave him. I have the text chain available if anyone would like to see it. Here is the bullet-point list of what happened: 1. He came out and quoted $1,200 for both chimneys to be tuckpointed. 2. We hired him and set a date. 3. He came out to do the work, spent about an hours setting up scaffolding and then did a little bit of the tuckpointing on one side of one chimney. He then stopped and started setting up scaffolding for the other chimney. He stopped half way through setting up this scaffolding. 4. He then told me he would need other equipment to complete the job. The only tiny bit of work he did was a mess because he said he could not reach it. So, it had to be redone. 5. He then told us it would cost us an additional $1,000 for him to get the equipment to finish. So, the quote went from $1,200 to $2, 200. This is not OK, but we are loving people and tried to be understanding. 6. We agreed to the higher amount and he said he would return the following Tuesday to complete the work. 7. He then askes for money for the work he did, WHAT? We got nothing out of his effort and it was all his mistakes that led us there. Still, he said he would take it off of the total and asked for $200. He has kids and since it would be just part of paying towards completing the job, we gave him the $200. 8. Then, the Friday evening before the Tuesday he was supposed to come out, he texted me at 5PM and simply said that WE HAD TO GET HIM a "man lift" and have it there on Tuesday morning. WHAT? That was never, in any way ever any part of any conversation or agreement. 9. I replied and told him we don't know anything about getting equipment like that and should not have to take on the liability for the equipment nor invest the time or money. It is his responsibility to handle this. 10. Again, we are loving people who don't like being angry and negative, so we offered to pay him the cost to rent the equipment, but he would need to handle everything. 11. He agreed and said he wanted payment through an app called CashApp. I told him he had told us we could pay via credit card or ApplPay, and we preferred to do that. He now says that he can not and it has to be CashApp for this. 12. I downloaded the app and texted him and told him I am ready to send him the money, but we just wanted to know if he was sure he could complete the job with this equipment and that he had used it before. We even apologized if the questions sounded trivial, but we would not have any additional money left if we paid him and then he could not compete the work. 13. From here, he blew us off. We now have the tiny bit he did do that has to be re-done, the entire job for both chimneys still needing to be done, we lost $200, a ton of hassle and the city inspector is still waiting for us to get this done. In Summery, we were treated horribly and are in a worse position and out money because we trusted Dillon. His communication is poor, his planning is awful and to just blow us off without any sort of apology or offer to return our $200 is just unforgivable. Check out the picture to see how sloppy the little bit of work he did was. read more

Arise Restoration & Custom Masonry - Look at how bad his tuckpointing is. That cement is supposed to be neatly in the grooves, but Dillon just slapped it all over the place. - Masonry/Concrete Near Me

Dylan called me and dropped by the next day, did a fine job afterwards. Apologies for not getting back and updating sooner, but I still stand by the no call no show comment. He just showed up the next day without mentioning or apologizing for not being able to make it the day prior. read more