The Masons Touch

It went really well. There was a glitch in the availability of the stone we wanted but Aaron provided alternate stone choices and we picked one that we love for the front steps. It is less slippery in winter, which turned out to be a blessing. It also picks up a minor color in the brick work of the house, which is also nice. The area was cleaned up nicely. We wanted to keep the larger, intact stone from the old steps so that was neatly stacked where we wanted it. We got three quotes and his was comparable with the other two. We chose Mason's Touch based on reviews in Angie's List and a good experience in working with him for the estimate. Aaron's estimate was the most detailed and he took the most care to explain the process and what we could expect. We couldn't have been happier with Aaron's work and would hire him again.

This was Aaron's second job for me. The first was installing natural stone on my home. He was always on time, worked very hard, kept me informed as to what was happening and made sure everything was looking the way I expected it to. The area was always cleaned up before he left for the day. The job was completed on time and exceeded my expectations. He has a very good eye and creative talent to make sure everything looks right. I highly recommend Mason's Touch for any work you may have. You won't be disappointed.

Aaron was great to work with and does excellent work! He had good ideas for us that we used in the final design. He was very knowledgable about the whole process and options to consider. There were no surprises and everything went as planned. He was flexible with our schedule, prompt, and finished on time. He truly cares about the customer and ensuring our expectations were met or exceeded. He took care of everything including moving some furniture for us and excellent clean up! We absolutely love the results. We chose a stone called cinnamon bark which has a lot of variation in shape and color. Aaron did an awesome job of laying the stone. I couldn't ask for anything better! We would highly recommend him to others and will definitely call him for our next project.

Aaron got pretty sick at the beginning of the year and at the time we thought we had a strict deadline to get the work done which my nephew later helped us work through. Due to some misunderstandings, email communication was left open-ended and therefore we ended up hiring someone else which I really did not want to do because I was so impressed with his work ethic, his knowledge, and with him and his wife as people. Aaron cared enough to follow up with me - while his prices are great, for me communication is primary. I can see that he *really* cares about his customers which is unusual in today's world. He's a one-man show, so people will probably have to wait to get into his schedule, however, I am so impressed with him that next time we need work done (and we will need it done, for sure), I will be calling him first. Good contractors are hard to find, and after just moving to this area, we're building our list of friendly, quality people that feel more like friends than contractors - people I know I can call if I have a question or who have the ethics to make it right if something goes wrong (and it rarely does). I feel that Aaron definitely falls into this category quality people. While I scored him a 'B' on professionalism and responsiveness due to the misunderstanding, I'm rating him an 'A' overall because of my initial impression and his great follow-up, and quite frankly due to the fact that I hope to hire him for my next job!

The service took a little longer than we anticipated due to communication issues but it did finally get completed.

They did an excellent job, showed up on time and cleaned up once the job as completed.

He was prompt in answering my E-mail and came out that same evening to look at the project and give me an estimate. He arrived on time on the scheduled day and was finished in the time he estimated. Very friendly and easy to work with. We would use his services again if the need arose. l

I had leftover stone from a previous job and I knew I had enough to redo my aging gas fireplace surround (think green tile, ugly). Aaron was able to remove the tile and shore up the fireplace better after he found the previous installers kind of did a shoddy job. He added new board to support the stone, mudded and cut all the stone to look natural around the fireplace. He also tiled the hearth with new tile. He took care to cover my wood floors and always asked if I liked what was being done. He's very talented and you can tell he's dedicated to his craft. I'm already talking to him about future jobs!

Love, love, love Aaron. He was awesome to work with. He was always on time, worked hard, and very good at what he does. You can see he takes great pride in his work. He has a good eye for design. He is very easy to get along with and has very good ideas. You can't go wrong hiring him. I also felt he goes above and beyond what would be expected in making sure I was totally happy with the work when it was completed. I get lots of compliments on the stone and the water feature. I look forward to working with him again.

Aaron was prompt with his estimate. Clear with payment details. Arranged a date around my crazy scheduled. They were here on time on the scheduled day and did a great job. They were very careful about cleanup afterwards too.

I truly do not remember the date which is why I filled in the above but, I do remember this provider. He was great! Arrived on time, did an extremely professional job, was friendly and outgoing. Cleaned up after himself and the garden wall looked great. I would highly recommend this provider.

Job went well. He was very communicative and completed the work as promised and on time.

I APOLOGIZE FOR THE LATE REVIEW. But it is no less heartfelt. Water was streaming into my house through the cement stairs in my garage due to the rapid snow melt. I called Aaron early that morning and he came out right away. He determined where the water was coming from and repaired the cement stairs. Aaron is very knowledgable and professional and offered many options to permanently fix my water issues. I will definitely have him return this spring to do more extensive work once the snow melts. Aaron also followed up with me the next day to make sure everything was still ok which I really appreciated. Aaron made a very stressful situation much more manageable. I highly recommend him.

They were good. It was fine. They were knowledgeable and did a good job.

But, in fact I did hear about my post. On July 19, 2012 Aaron Sent me a message on facebook as follows: "Leanne, I would like for formally introduce myself. My name is Aaron and I own The Masons Touch. It has been a crazy year and I just happened to look at the website and hear your story. Tomorrow I am going to make a couple phone calls to see if there is any way that I can get some funding/donations to help build a pond for your family. Please give me a call when it is convenient. ***-***-**** Aaron." At first I was very excited and thrilled for my son! As I talked with Aaron he relayed back and forth to me all the plans for the pond he had come up with so far.He told me another contractor had donated a bunch of paver stone to make the pond area more accessible by installing wheelchair accessible paths (since my neuromuscular disease is likely to leave me unable to walk normally someday.) This was revealed in a message sent to me on July 20, 2012 and reads as follows: "Leanne,I have already talked to some of my previous clients and some of the distributors that I buy materials from. If I may ask are you the one that is in a wheelchair? I have one company that I have done some work for that has some "surplus" pavers that he is willing to donate and I have some other friends that are willing to donate either physically to do the job or monetaraly so I think you will be just fine, boulders are already being donated I am just waiting to hear back from Home Depot to see if they are willing to donate the sand and mortar that I will need to do the cement work and another company is going to get back to me on the pond liner and pump." It sounded to me like Aaron had everything under control and well thought out. After these first few days though, I stopped hearing so much from Aaron and some problems began to brew.. The trouble began when the story started changing. First, a Facebook page called "Fund Zachary's Pond" showed up on facebook. On it was a logo that Aaron had made by lifting a picture of my son from my page,photoshopping it together with a picture of a pond that was much more substantial than what was eventually built for Zach, and was intended to solicit funds. When I asked Aaron about it, he said he didn't have the money to put towards this project that he thought he did at first, and so without soliciting funds the pond couldn't happen. Aaron did not have my permission to make and publish this page before he went ahead a did so anyway. At that time I figured I should be a good sport and I passed the pageon to each of my facebook friends. This was very embarrassing to me as most people didn't know at that time about my illness and subsequent financial difficulties. I was also upset to see that my friends were the only people solicited over that facebook page, there were no friends or business associates of Aaron's ever approached via that page only my friends. That started making me worried that all was not well. Numerous other issues developed. Again without my permission Craig's list was used to solicit funds without permission. I've tried to ask Aaron many times for an accounting of the funds that were collected on zach's behalf but he has never provided that information. When I would try to talk to Aaron about when he planned to install the pond he kept putting me off. Also, the plans for the pond kept seeming to shrink as well. To make a long story short, it was nearly a year before that pond was finally built. Aaron spent about 2-3 hours on site on 2 days to work on the pond. Although I love to garden, I was not prepared for the condition the pond was left in for me to cope with. It basically was a large, raw mud puddle. I needed to do a whole lot of work to it myself after Aaron had left. I installed edging, black dirt, about a dozen bags of cedar mulch, aIn the end, the only supplies Aaron provided were a pump, a rubber liner, some gravel, some smaller rocks about the size of my fist, and some foam sealant that was used to help make the rock areas watertight. The center of this pond was only 12 inches deep. By squeezing every possible drop of water in I could get up to 15 inches of depth. Every reference I have consulted states that is not deep enough to make a viable pond as at only 12 inches deep any fish in the pond are susceptible to becoming a real "Frisky's Buffet" for the neighborhood felines. The pond also has no filtration system, and no underwater lighting. Rather than bringing my son joy, this pond is making him into a wreck as he worries about which fish will be eaten next! That isn't what we wanted by any means from this project. So this spring, I contacted Aaron and explained my concerns about how shallow this pond was and the problems that was causing. I asked him to please give me an estimate on what it would cost to remedy the situation. He had some choice, unpleasant things to say to me and told me to take a hike. In closing, we really don't know what Mr. Sybrant's intention were with this pond project. He is still actively soliciting funds via Facebook for a pond that he walked away from calling it "done" when it clearly wasn't. He is using my son's name and image to advertise his company without permission. He isn't willing to fix the project so that the fish who live in this pond have a humane home, even if I pay him to do so. He has created an incredible amount of distress for both my son and myself. If I could go back in time I would decline his offer of this pond. I feel as if he did it for all the wrong reasons rather than the right ones. I want him to remove any and all advertising he has that features Zach in a misleading way or in any way at all for that matter. And I would like him to remember that in a project like this,the affected child always comes first!

Aaron did us the favor of coming on the spur of the moment after another contractor found a large hole in our foundation wall. Because of his flexibility and quick response we were able to salvage the rest of the work we were having done to our home. He and his staff were extremely professional and easy to work with, and gave us a fair price despite the rush nature of the job.

I initially called to see if he could do some tuck pointing on our home's brickwork, and possibly fix some paver issues in our landscaping. He told me to send him an email with my contact info, which I did both directly through his website, and also through Angie's List. Several days went by and he never called or emailed to set a day up to come out and even give an estimate. Seeing his prior "excuses" of being non-responsive to others' requests as well due to his being a "small company" with the inability to get back to people at times due to so few employees (he should hire some people to help him if that's the case), I thought I'd at least give him an "out." I told him that if he truly was too busy to help me out with my home's issues, to at least extend the courtesy of either an email or phone call to just say so, and I would move on to the next contractor. Needless to say, all I got was "crickets." No phone call, no email, no explanation for his unresponsiveness. I guess he doesn't need the business. I wouldn't hire a guy who can't take 5 minutes to send an email.

This was a reasonably large project, in the 5 to 10,000 range. We were stood up on the appointment for an estimate - no one showed up, and no one called. We called back and were told that another project had gone over time "had to go home." We were promised that they would come by and do an estimate, but we never heard back. Very unprofessional.

We received several bids to replace the retaining wall in the front of our home which was beginning to crumble onto the sidewalk. After several bids, we chose The Mason's Touch to replace the existing wall with boulders. We are very impressed with the work Aaron did from the beginning to the end. He was very friendly, completed the project quickly and cleaned up afterwards. The end result is impressive.

I had a number of cracks in cement covering the foundation blocks. He did an excellent job of filling in the cracks and blending in the cement.

Very responsive and prompt.

They got back to me within 15 min and were great to work with. Their rates were the most reasonable compaired to anyone eleses. I would recommend them to anyone for seasonal or even spur of the moment snow removal!

Easy to work with and does great work.

Cold weather was the main hurdle, but Aaron pulled through and got the job done on time and looking good!

Great work done. Very courteous and friendly. Excellent value. I would definitely use them again.