Bennett Masonry

Horrible experience. He lied during his interview claiming that he'd have an entire crew to help expedite the work. When he showed up it was sometimes with his wife and sometimes with another male. They weren't there enough to establish a work pattern. He frequently complained about it being too hot to work in the sun although there were multiple house building and roofing projects going on all week within 1 mile of our worksite. He claimed he was laying the stuff out at his house and cutting stone there then he would bring it in and lay it at our worksite. In truth he was not. We inspected it ourselves to determine that. As mentioned he kept asking for more money claiming hard times yet he failed to work hard. We're still not sure why he was laying stone the way he did. There was no clear system or pattern to what he was doing. Many people questioned the way in which it was done but at that point a contract was in place and we were at his mercy. He became difficult to work with in a very short time and at the end after he attempted to confront us over us removing the stone from his location (with permission and authority) the police were called in to intervene. DO NOT HIRE THIS INDIVIDUAL. If you do, be prepared for excuses and no work and lost money.

Bennett Masonry came from the Athens, Ohio, area to do brick pointing on my older home in Huntington, WV. The estimate was $1500; specifically, John indicated that he got $750 a day and my needs would involve two days' work. He asked for half the total up front on the day of the estimate, which was about ten days before the beginning of the actual job, but I was unwilling to do that. He did eventually agree that I could give him the front money at the end of his first day of work, and we set a start date. Although I realize that he was traveling a fairly large distance, he arrived considerably later than he had indicated on both days of work. The first day he dug out all the joints and then left them uncovered. It rained on the second planned day of work so he didn't come, though he did call. Fortunately it was not a driving rainstorm and I didn't have any resulting leaks, but I spent the day worried about the possibility that a hard rainstorm pounding through those open seams would cause interior damage. The third day he returned to mortar the seams, again arriving hours later than planned. He didn't strike the joints, which I found odd since my original joints are lightly struck, but since this wasn't real obvious I didn't complain. While here, he indicated that there were several more seams that needed work and that he would fix them for an additional $250. I would have said yes had it not been for the phrasing of the estimate. He had priced the job as "two days' work," and his actual work time for the job came in at about six hours. I thought--and still think--that a customer has the right to expect more than three hours of work each day for $750. We discussed this, but John did not agree. All that said, the work that was done was very neat and appeared to be extremely competently rendered. I believe that this company definitely knows the art of brick work. The Angie's List subscriber who termed John "respectful of the property" was absolutely correct: he and Angel left the yard tidier than they found it on both days of the job.

This company was great. They were so respectful of the property and did an amazing job to restore the front of the house to its original condition. The clean-up was immaculate and the landscape protected perfectly.