Kansas City Masonry

Description of Work: Recapped the top of my wall, tuck pointing all around the house. Very professional and excellent work. |Some other Masonry companies didn't even want to touch it because there was a water leak involved.

Description of Work: The contractor promised he would send me progress photos since I was out of town. He didn't send photos of anything other than the first day (dug a trench), until the wall was nearly complete. He told me it would be a Kansas limestone wall. Instead he built a cinder block wall with fake stone veneer on one side and some stucco with exposed cinder block on the other side. The fake stone veneers are not interlocking, and the concrete grout for the veneers was clearly missing Portland cement, as it was porous, crumbling and flaking off within the first week of application, such that you can see the cinder block underneath. The owner of the company, Anthony Reyes, insisted on putting a "wood cap" on top, which I thought was very strange for a solid limestone wall, but I deferred to his artistic judgement. As it turns out, the wood cap was to cover up the cinder blocks that I had no idea would be there. The wood cap was hastily nailed on; the top board wasn't wide enough, so the water seeps straight in to the cinder block. And the top board was even applied upside-down, so the water doesn't run off as you'd expect. Regarding the foundation for the wall, KC Masonry left the wood forms in, so I have nice wood pieces rotting in my yard right now. I had a handyman try to pull the wood forms out, and he got a couple pieces out, but he said it was going to take him more than 20 hours to get all the pieces out. Kansas City Masonry's contract says that they will remove the dirt next to the wall and put it back to original grade, swept finish. Instead they left more than 1 foot of hard-packed mud, completely covering the only sidewalk that goes from the garage to my house, as well as partially covering my patio, which is right outside the main door we use to get into the house. Can you imagine? We were living in a mud pit! I had to pay a couple of landscaper guys $700 to come out with shovels and wheelbarrows to dig up all that dirt. Kansas City Masonry's contract was also a joke. Anthony Reyes used a previous client's contract, such that my name wasn't even on there, instead it was Joe Schmoe or whatever. I was out of town while the work was going on. Anthony Reyes walked off the job the day prior to me coming into town. When I got to town and saw how sloppily the wall had been finished (especially the condition of the cement, the fake veneers, and the deep mud blocking access to my house), I contacted Anthony Reyes right away. Anthony refused to visit the site, even though my house is 5 minutes from his office. He said that any additional communication should be handled by the attorneys, but he didn't provide any name or phone number for his attorney. I paid for an attorney to write Anthony a letter listing the many problems with the construction of the wall. However, Anthony Reyes nor his attorney never bothered to respond to the letter. Clearly, this was a case of fraud, poor workmanship, and bad customer service. The attorney I hired said that I could easily win a case for fraud against Anthony Reyes, but the legal fees would be around the same cost as the wall ($9000), and it's very difficult to collect money from an independent contractor because they can hide their sources of income. So even if I were to spend $9000 on a civil fraud case and win, I still wouldn't get any money because there's no way to garnish wages on an independent contractor.

Description of Work: Contracted to build retaining wall

Description of Work: We had a previous fountain installed that wasn’t done properly by another contractor where it was falling apart and the pump had gone out. We hired him to build a new fountain.