
Serving Mulga, AL and surrounding areas
Approved
In business since 2010
Free estimates
Credit card accepted
"The contractor, Mateo, came for the initial meeting, but when it came time to work, he was rarely on site - only stopping by briefly to drop off materials to the two workers that he left there. The workers were very nice, and were trying hard to do a good job, but they had limited tools to accomplish the work and the skill level of the brick work was obviously a problem for the mason doing it - he struggled on all of the work that required more than just laying a straight and level row of bricks. The fact that neither of the men left on the site speak any functional English, and we speak barely functional Spanish, left communications on the details and problems on the brick work a significant issue. Calls to Mateo to help would result in a very short visit to instruct the masons on what to do - and then he would quickly leave again, leaving the work to 'get done' by the same guys who had struggled with it rather than having someone with more adequate skills to do the job. The men were left for long periods of time on the job, a few times through torrential rain showers that came while they continued to try to apply stucco and mortar while the rain came down. This resulted in issues that greatly affected the quality of the work: newly applied mortar washed and ran down over also newly applied stucco - causing discoloration to run down, stucco was stopped mid-wall and when the work resumed the color of the new section did not match at all. The lack of experience in the masons to make the column tops from brick was a problem, exacerbated by the fact that they were not provided the proper tools or block to do the job. They did not have a square to check the shape of what they were doing - so it was crooked on every side, they did not have solid blocks - so they tried to use blocks with holes in them - resulting in an eyesore. One of the columns was meant to support a light post in a hole in the center but the bricks were not laid correctly and the post was concreted in off-center. When Mateo was contacted regarding the issues that continued to get worse instead of better, he said that he would 'fix the problems himself'. He showed up at the home of the senior citizen homeowners for about 30 minutes again, and used a bag of straight concrete color (orange) diluted with water and sponged it over the largest wall - the result was horrible. At that time he also took a sledge hammer to the bricks that topped the columns to 'redo' those, but just partially broke the blocks up and actually broke one of the columns, before heading on his way again - but not before collecting a check from the homeowners for the price in full of the COMPLETED JOB. The site was left like this for several days. Mateo was unresponsive to questions about how he was going to properly fix the problems. When he finally showed up to do the work, he was complaining that he didn't know why anyone was questioning his work ethic or that he would show up to correct the job. He was condescending and confrontational to me when asked how he planned to make the correction on the color - telling me to 'watch and learn from the expert'. This resulted in a terse exchange before he said that he would be using a concrete wash over the orange to correct the color. He did this and it did result in a color closer to the original buff color that was ruined by the rain-wet mortar. The homeowner himself chiseled the rest of the brick from the top of the columns, and Mateo did eventually come to finish the columns with some landscape pavers that the homeowner had suggested from Home Depot since Mateo would not get the solid pavers that actually matched the bricks that he used for the rest of the job. The homeowner settled for this as an 'at least adequate' solution to the problem. Mateo again complained that he didn't understand why anyone would think that he was not going to correct or complete the job, and expressed his displeasure to the homeowners. As of the date of this review, he has been messaged a few times about repairing the stucco on the column and cutting a hole for the lightpost in the proper spot - through the 'pavers' that now top the column. He responded that he would be out to fix them - tomorrow - which never seems to happen. I know that he has a few jobs going on at the same time, and I hope that the work is better on those sites - I also wish that we would have gotten quality work so that we could have used the company more, but at this point I would not use them again nor refer them to anyone other than a professional who can stand there and watch every misstep to keep this from happening to another client."





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