We had Yard effects come out to have some sod installed, clean up a natural forest area, and put in stairs going up an embankment to the forest area. Once they finally started on the project, 3 months after requesting a quote, I also asked them if they could lay a 6 X 8 area of stepping stones for my BBQ grill. (I wanted to surprise my wife when she returned home from a trip) He told me he could get it done with about 3 bags of sand, and the stones, and it would take an hour or 2.
Well my wife was home before it was completed since it took 3-4 days to complete, and it isn't even centered between the two windows that I requested it be centered between. Also, It is level but only by sand. It starts level with patio against the house but then is about 3 inches higher as it goes out, so now the end of it is 3-4 inches higher than the grass. So now we are having to add some landscape timber around the edges to make it look better and so we don't trip over it.
The clean up of the natural area was decent, they left some stumps that my wife and I had to remove ourselves, but overall they did a good job with this project.
The stairs they put in were pretty good as well. We have had to make some adjustments and additions, but overall they turned out ok.
The sod they laid turned out ok, but they didn't prep the soil properly before laying it so we have a ton of weeds coming through as well as some dead areas that didn't root well due to the dirt not being properly prepped. They also needed about 1/2 pallet more sod than they quoted and were supposed to return to lay that, but never showed. When my wife contacted them they apologized and said they would be back out once we returned from a trip and do it at no cost, he said he had put us on the calendar. Well that has been a month and they have not shown up and we have not heard from them.
So we are just cutting our losses and touching up and completing the rest of the projects ourselves. I would like to say it was money well spent, but most of the money was not. We could have done most of it all ourselves for a lot less, and done a better job.
All we really couldn't have done ourselves was the stairs, as that is way too much digging in very hard dirt for us to do (we aren't young anymore)
So if you want a company that does a job worth paying for I don't recommend Yard Effects. Between the lost money and the headache involved, it definitely isn't worth it! read more