VALLI MASONRY LLC

The mortar on my stone veneer porch crumbled over time and the stones began to fall off. Tim came out to look at it and offer his advice and an estimate. He came off as a nice guy with lots of jokes and smiles. He purported to be an expert in this situation—even telling me which company built this porch originally in the 1960s or so. He told me you cannot get these stones anymore so he'll have to move stones from the side of the porch to the front, then move the broken front ones to the side where fewer people would see them. This didn't sound ideal, but if I couldn't get replacement stones, what else could I do? I agreed to his estimate of $985. He told me he could start in April, but I had to call him in May to ask where he was? He came out two days later around 8:00AM with no knock on the door, just started tearing up the porch. He brought two men with him who did the majority of work—which upset me because he told me he does all the work. He mostly supervised this project. These men didn't have the 30 years experience he claimed to have himself. Once they put the porch back together, I could see how little they cared. The mortar was smeared into the cracks and all over the stones and surrounding sidewalk. They didn't put the stone corners, back into the corners of the porch. They just slapped up stones haphazardly, and even ran out of stones to fill in a large portion of the porch. I expressed my frustration that there were enough stones when he started, but suddenly there weren't. He even went so far as to accuse someone in the neighborhood of stealing the stones. Near the end of the project, he actually had to fill in a large hole with mortar and put fake mortar lines in it to appear like a stone. A month later, I didn't want to seal the porch with the mortar slopped all over so I called Tim to ask if there was a way to clean it up beforehand. He has not returned my call. After-the-fact, I found a group of masons who do stellar work in my neighborhood. They came out and were so ashamed of the work Tim did, they offered to clean up the mortar mess free of charge. They also confirmed that you CAN get replacement stones after all. They said the work Tim did wasn't worth $150 much less the $985 he estimated. The most unfortunate part is that now that Tim massacred my beautiful porch, it would do more harm to take it apart and start over with competent masons. I just have to live with it.