Get matched with top masons in Waite Park, MN

"Gavin’s meticulous attention to detail is a rare and valued skill. His careful work is top notch and should we need more work on our brick home we would not hesitate to recommend or call on him again. He’s prompt, kind, courteous and maintained a clean workplace throughout the process."

"I appreciated the professional approach to my brick replacement project, the timely scheduling and excellent work done. They were on time, done quickly and left the area very clean and neat. The actual brick construction was perfect and exactly as promised for a reasonable price."

"They were in and out in a day. Wall looks great"

"Work done next day, it was a smaller job That no one wanted to do, the Morter between the bricks look great, the top levels are redone with a solid. Cement top and the connection between the brick and the vinyl siding is done. I am so happy!. Thank you!!"

"I highly recommend Lenâ s company Trilite. The process of replacing my brick with stone veneer went so smoothly. Since Trilite was the manufacturer and the installer in my project, I was able to choose from a myriad of stone and colors. The quality and workmanship of the masons was above and beyond what I expected. The stone is beautiful and it was all done in a timely manner and at a fair price. For stone veneer this is the place!!"

"5 stars for Clark Companies!! Kyle and crew created a beautiful patio for me. Not only was the process easy and professional, the finished patio is perfect. Thank you, Kyle."

"My neighbor and i couldn't believe how fast these guys were working! We knew if we'd tried to tackle this it would take us more than twice as long. We were both impressed. I had to leave while they were still working and when I came back I really looked at what they had done. It was then i saw that the quick work had come with their being careless. The ground was lumpy. While my yard had had lots of weeds in it, it had been very level, but in their process of removing the old grass and weeds, they made it very lumpy. They didn't rototil the ground so much of the yard was very hard, and they didn't level it by raking or any other method. Well, it was so hard i don't think they could have. They didn't smash down the sod after they'd set it on the ground, so when you walked on it some spots went way down and others were higher than the rest of the ground. Some small areas were so high that when the lawn was mowed the first time the grass was cut almost to the ground because it was so much taller. The corners of the sod were not tucked in. They had laid sod on top of concrete pavers, on top of bricks, on the footings for fence posts, on top of other pieces of sod. There was an area up against the garage where i'd had a garden hose running under concrete pavers. I had removed the pavers but of course it was their job not mine to churn up the soil. But the grass there started dying, even with having been watered profusely. When i pulled up the sod to look underneath i could still see where the hose had been, and the sod was cut too big so it was kind of sitting up in the air, touching the garage at that end, but not even on the ground. There were a couple areas that we had specifically discussed, where i wanted to put wood chips or set out some plants. I said i wanted those areas to be rototilled to make sure there would be no weeds. I was told they don't use a rototil; they do it by hand. Whatever. But they didn't. It was dense and of course the weeds all started coming back very soon. They knew that my house was going to be going up for sale We had discussed that this project was to make the lawn look better for "curb appeal" . One area they were supposed to do was the boulevard. Very important, right? But when i got home i saw that they had done part of it and just left the rest . When i pointed this out they said they had used more sod than they'd anticipated in the back yard so didn't have enough. But the back yard isn't as important! This was careless to not do the front (they were going to come back to do more on the back yard a month or so later after my garden was done so it would have made sense to complete the front not the back anyhow). I repeatedly asked to have them come finish the boulevard area. The manager came out several times to take care of where the sod was on top of other sod or on top of bricks or pavers or so lumpy you couldn't walk without twisting your ankle but the workers didn't come back to take care of the sod until they came to finish the back. Another thing was i had several rose plants that i wanted to bring with me when i moved. The roses had been in their locations for about 20 years so of course the roots would go down very deep. I thought since this was their job that they'd do better digging them up than i would. I specified that they were very well established and needed to be dug out very deep. The roses in the front were one kind and in the back were different. I had asked that they put the ones from the front in large plastic bags which i provided, and those from the back in the wheelbarrow. When i got home i saw that they had put them all in the wheelbarrow, so it was difficult to tell them apart, and they had not dug them up deep; they had chopped the large roots right off. Some they had gone down less than a foot and none had they gone much more than a foot. This was last June. I wasn't able to plant the roses at my new house right away but i put them into 5 gallon pots, except for 2 that were awkward shapes and i left those in the wheelbarrow and added soil. They were all kept well watered. After i planted them in the ground they were also kept well watered. They all lost all their leaves. I have never moved roses that had been so well established so perhaps that is to be expected but i know having the roots chopped off gave them a definite disadvantage. Only one of the plants had any life by the end of growing season. They are all still planted but i am not hopeful that they will come back. I called my nursery and got the replacement price for the kinds of roses i had. I deducted that amount when i paid. The photos might be kind of difficult to make sense of. The two sticks are the two worst of the roses they dug up to transplant. You can see that the roots on both were chopped off. How could those grow? And there's a photo of where pieces of sod overlapped so those parts died at the edges. And one of sod on top of a fence footing. And two of the area on the boulevard where they were supposed to improve the look with installing sod. Umm, not so much. I cannot believe they had an A rating. What was wrong with them when they were working at my house?? One thing they did was remove a fairly large tree. They were obligated to contact the city to verify that no utilites or pipres were in the way and they never did which is a major safety concern."

"We started with just a big lawn and an old rickety deck in our backyard and nothing else, and planned on a massive project with an equally massive total budget of about $200,000 to put in a new in-ground swimming pool, new deck, new concrete patio with outdoor kitchen, vinyl gazebo, planting beds, trees, fence, and revised drainage scheme for our fairly flat lot with clay soil and poor drainage, plus a small home addition to our house as well. Sculptured Earth was to be our landscape contractor and project manager to coordinate all the various other contractors. Josh (the owner of the company) promptly met with us at our appointment time at our home and reviewed our "needs and wants" for our project. He met with us again a week later with 3 rough drawings/concepts for our yard, and after taking our suggestions and noting our likes and dislikes about each, he came back for a third meeting with a "semi-final" plan with an initial itemized contract showing the price. Up to this point, Josh REQUIRED NO MONEY UP FRONT and NO CONTRACT for all that design work (which must have been several hours worth of work), and only when we decided that this "semi-final" plan was what we wanted, did he ask for a deposit and a signed contract. (Ultimately this was one of the reasons we hired Josh, including his impeccable references. We had interviewed 2 other contractors, one who never called us back after the first meeting, and another who wanted a $1000 retainer to just start the design process). He also discussed various scenarios for staging the project in parts so that we could opt to only do portions at a time, in case our budget required it, but fortunately we were in a position to do the entire project at once. He did allow us to modify some items as the project was in progress when we changed our minds about certain details, or wanted to add components along the way. No "hidden fees" or "change order fees" were ever added on, just the cost of the work and materials. We added and subtracted a few things along the 4 months (Apr-July) that it took to complete everything, which did increase the projected completion time somewhat, but we also had a few delays due to the usual weather issues, and also a 10-day delay that was entirely due to an electrical subcontractor (who was hired through the pool contractor) who couldn't keep to his promised schedule dates. This was not Josh's fault. He was always responsive whenever we had concerns. He always returned my phone calls within a day. Josh's business philosophy is that until his customer is satisfied, he will not be either. His crew was always polite and on time each day. A project of this scope can be expected to have glitches along the way, and ours was no exception. Whenever a problem arose, Josh was always receptive to our wishes when a solution was devised. An example: Josh's concrete subcontractor made a critical error in distorting the pool's autocover housing, such that the cover couldn't be installed. The concrete guy wanted to do a "shortcut" fix which was not something that we would have been satisfied with. I emphasized this point to Josh, and he made the concrete guy do it the way we wanted it, which was going to involve removing and re-pouring 3 times more concrete than the concrete subcontractor wanted to, but would result in a much more structurely sound patio. To be honest, Josh and his crew didn't catch all the problems that arose. Not because they ignored them, but because a project of this size is difficult to keep a handle on for anyone. So I did act as my own "general contractor" to keep tabs on things. I caught the electrical contractor accidentally kinking one of the gas lines to the pool heater. This is not something I would necessarily expect Josh's crew to see. I had to make the calls to the gas subcontractor to make sure this was repaired before the gas line was buried. There was another error that Josh missed which I was able to catch when I noticed that it didn't appear that the deck stairs would reach the concrete patio as intended based on where the forms were relative to the partially-completed deck stair landing. Apparently Josh's error was in assuming the deck plans were completely accurate from the deck contractor, but there was a slight variance in the actual deck stairs once built. It probably would've been better if Josh had verified with the decking contractor where the stairs would end at the bottom instead of assuming things by the plans. But again, I know that Josh would've fixed it if it hadn't been caught by me and the concrete was poured incorrectly. I just helped to circumvent a mistake before it happened. Another potential error happened at the beginning where Josh's crew starting building the stone steps to our shed area, but had to re-do it 3 times because they kept making them stick out into our yard a little too far for our liking. But Josh was more than happy to make the necessary changes (with no additional cost to us) until we were happy with the result. A final glitch happened when Josh was spraying a muriatic acid solution around our newly installed outdoor stainless steel refridgerator, grill, cabinet doors, etc. The refridgerator door was etched by the solution, and I pointed it out to Josh. He reimbursed me for the $200 it would cost to get a new door for the refridgerator. One time, his crew was digging the drainage trench for the French drain, and they damaged the gas line also. Josh notified me immediately and arranged to have the gas subcontractor out to the house ASAP, and he covered that cost without question. I don't want to paint a negative picture about Josh and Sculptured Earth by mentioning these errors. Quite the contrary, because a big project like this has a good probability that mistakes can and will happen even with our painstakingly detailed planning, the homeowner wants the contractor(s) involved to take ownership of the errors and make things right to the satisfaction of the homeowner. What you don't want is a contractor who makes excuses and tries to avoid fixing the problem, or tries to get away with a "shortcut." Worse yet, you don't want a contractor who will try to hide the mistake from the homeowner. I wanted to highlight that Josh is the type of contractor who will do whatever is necessary to fix any glitches along the way. He runs his business with the utmost integrity, his crew works extremely hard to make sure the homeowner is satisfied, and in the end they do fabulous work! If I had to do it all over again, I would definitely hire Josh again. In fact, when we get around to doing our front and side yards, I'll be calling Josh and Sculptured Earth to do the job."

"Showed up when we expected and got the work done even with a few problems they encountered. Will work with them again."

"Excellent process to get started on a new project. They come to you and make everything easy. Working with Lucas Skuza was the best!"