Overall unhappy with my experience.
The owner was a good guy and professional but one of the workers was rude and very unprofessional. He even said he knew we were going to be a problem client because we went out and asked questions and confirmed what was agreed upon during the bid. There were several things that were brought up during the bid that the workers wanted to do differently, one was that they were supposed to remove a concrete pad outside our door, they said they would remove it and then decided not to, saying that by leaving it there it would strengthen the new patio? Turns out, it is cracking all along where the old pad is. They also charged us to remove the old concrete pad, which they didn't remove, and didn't refund us the money that they were paid to remove the old pad.
The other was working around a window well, which required them to modify the slope of the pad. It didn't seem like they put down the agreed upon depth of the base gravel. They said they used 5000 psi concrete but what we found out is they used 4000 psi then added something (Portland cement) to increase it to 5000.
They didn't clean up very well and we still have concrete on my driveway from where they mixed. They said they would clean up the concrete splatter from the driveway, fences, and alongside the house but didn't and my wife spent over five hours scrubbing most of it off.
The framing was done poorly, we have gaps and significant spillage. We had to chisel out some sprinkling pipes because of the spillage. We also pinned back some pipes that we didn't want to have concrete poured on, and told them to leave those pipes where they were because we didn't want concrete on top of them. They unpinned the pipes, threw them back in the ground, and poured on them which now makes them useless and we can no longer use them for what we originally planned for.
We asked for the patio to be a certain width and they came up about 6 inches too short all along the entire length of the patio but still charged us for the length that we had originally asked for but didn't get.
The first time our stairs were poured they had concerns about the concrete and so they ripped it out, so credit to them on that. The second time they poured they removed the frame too early from the steps which caused an entire side of the steps to crack and slope to the one side. We didn't see it until it had set as they had it covered. Later I found out they knew about it but didn't want to do it again and still went ahead with the patio pour. It's very noticeable and has made us lose our footing on several occasions causing falls. Initially, they didn't want to do anything to fix it, then they said if they fixed it it would look bad, then we finally agreed on a slight discount of only $500 when the stairs themselves cost $2500 and will cost us, even more, to have them removed since they need to be redone.
In less than 2 months we started seeing cracks. At the time I write this it's been less than 11 months. People are commenting that the stress lines are crooked and done oddly. The first cracks are getting wider, we have cracks in new areas, one is on the area of the stairs that was done wrong and one that is over 6 feet long in the center of the patio and getting longer and wider. read more
