CUSTOM BRICKWORK

Never completed the work

unknown

I called Keith on a Wednesday, and he was able to stop out on Saturday to take a look at my project. I asked him for an estimate to brick over a former window in a screened porch, add some brick in an outdoor grill area, and make various repairs (resetting loose bricks, tuckpointing, filling holes, etc) around the rest of the house. Keith was on-time for the Satirday appointment, and was very friendly. He chatted about various DIY projects I have underway, and gave me the impression that he was professional and thourogh. He clearly had lots of experience, and spoke highly of his small crew. I chose to hire him on the spot for $1200 (over a competing qoute of $750) since this type of brickwork is highly visible and looks terrible if not done right. We setup the work for "no sooner than Wednesday" the following week and agreed he would call with a specific day so that we could cover specific details about the dimensions off the grill area. On Tuesday shortly after noon I called him to see if he was still planning to start Wednesday. Low and behold he was already at my house working! Apparently I had been pulled up in the schedule. Since we hadn't finalized dimensions in the grill area (and I always like to be around when contractors are working) I told them to stop and rushed home from work. When I got home I found the work they had already done on the window looked akward. The color of the new brick didn't matter since I was planning to paint it, but the bricks they installed still weren't a close match to my existing brick (they were beat to h*** reclaimed bricks -- not nice square corners like the existing brick). Additionally, the courses trailed upward and didn't line up with the existing rows on the corner. Once they actually had dimensions to build to, the grill area turned out okay (though not great), and the mortar they used for tuck pointing was considerably darker then the original mortar. I realize remodel/repair work is never "perfect", but I expected it to be pretty darn close for the extra money. Keith, who had been "trained by an english bricklayer," was in and out several times during the afternoon, and held a trowel for less than 5 or 10 minutes. While his crew seemed to know what they were doing, at the beginning it was certainly implied that he would be doing the work. Chuy ("chewy") and Keith, the 2 guys who did 90% of the work, were friendly and cleaned up everything well at the end of the day. As they were wrapping up Keith pulled me aside to settle up and hit me up for an extra $200 for "extra tuckpointing" (even though we had walked around the house and he had seen the whole job ahead of time). I asked him to split the difference "how about $100", but he insisted "NO, HOW ABOUT $200!" I begrudingly paid him the extra since I still need one small followup repair that was part of the original qoute. In the end, I feel scammed and would not recommend this company!