We commissioned Scapes to build a patio, a wood burning fireplace, and to do extensive landscaping in our back yard. The design was beautiful, but the outcome was overall somewhat disappointing.
The patio surface is concrete that has been scored and stained to look like flagstones. Sounds beautiful, right? It is beautiful from a distance, and at first glance when you step onto it, but we have multiple footprints embedded in the concrete where a worker evidently walked across the wet cement. Unbelievable, but true. We also have some unexplained white spots in the finish. Russell had various possible explanations, but no solutions except to acid-wash and re-coat the patio. Sadly, neither problem was solved by their efforts. Bottom line, Russell concluded that there is nothing to do but to live with footprints and white spots on the patio.
Also, when we told them about a six-foot-long crack in the patio finish, they simply suggested we "watch" it over the next year.
The stone fireplace with a stone seating wall around the perimeter of the patio is beautiful, but the fireplace smokes excessively out the front. When we contacted Russell about this, these were the options ultimately presented to us as solutions:
1. Lower the fireplace opening dramatically and create something that would look like a "pizza oven."
2. Install a gas line and ceramic logs and give up burning wood.
3. Light a fire at least an hour before we want to go outside. In other words, live with it.
As one might expect, none of these options were satisfactory.
While we appreciated the company's fast response fixing a sudden issue of water coming up between our house and patio, we know this shouldn't have happened in the first place. They'd evidently merely capped off a sprinkler head when they poured the patio instead of re-routing the water line, a shortcut that ultimately proved unwise.
The landscape plants were just as disappointing. The shade plants that died in the first round of planting were not appropriate for their location in full sun. They replaced them with more appropriate plants that didn't survive the freeze we had in December. Interestingly, the same kind of plants in my front yard weren't damaged at all. Russell's response was that there was no guarantee against "acts of God."
I'm now in the process of buying and replanting many of my landscape plants including three expensive, espaliered jasmine plants that were well over six feet tall and four feet wide. In Scapes' defense we did experience four cold nights last December here in Dallas.
Except for the water issue previously mentioned, their response time on all issues has been slow.
After looking back over the past year of our association with Russell and Davey, we simply don't have the confidence in their ability or their commitment to excellence to continue with our relationship or to recommend them. The design of everything was attractive, and the execution of the project has some success, but the failures are significant enough to be, all in all, disappointing. read more
