LUPFER LANDSCAPING

Our experience with this company was awful. While I think this company does a decent job on lawn maintenance, any type of large scale design and build project is way beyond their abilities. Tom Lupfer lacks the foresight, organizational skills and practical knowledge that is needed to successfully complete that kind of project. We had used Lupfer for lawn maintenance for a few years and he asked us to hire him to redesign and landscape our front yard. There were numerous problems with the projects....he completely forgot about the irrigation which resulted in having to redo a lot of planting; he planted arborvitaes on the wrong side of the property line and when they had to dig them up and move them they filled a window well with dirt. This eventually led to the basement flooding because they had covered the drain in the window well. The biggest problem though was with the hardscape work they did. They installed a front walkway and three stairs leading down to the street. On the front walk, Lupfer used a limestone rail to border the walk. Not even a year after the installation the rails began to crack and break. I brought it to his attention and he said he would fix it. Its been over two years and he has not fixed it. Even worse, the stairs they installed do not meet code. People kept tripping on the stairs Lupfer had installed so I called an inspector to have them checked. The riser between steps are different heights and the tread on the top step is 2 inches too long. The job had required a permit from the village and when I questioned the village on the stairs not meeting code they told me Lupfer Landscaping had never called for the final inspection which would have caught the out of code stairs. Tom Lupfer has been contacted numerous times about these last two issues and has done nothing to fix them. While the mistakes with the irrigation and planting and the front walk were irritating and costly the biggest problem is that he installed stairs that did not meet code, tried to hide it from the village and refused to take responsibility for the work.