Artistic Concrete & Masonry

We had a concrete sidewalk and a 12 X 11 pad poured. The team did a fantastic job and it looks great.

Very very bad. Richard has no integrity or ethics. He did some stamped concrete for me but it didn’t turn out right. He came back and his crew tried to fix it but they didn’t fix it. The concrete doesn’t match after he stained it for the second time. He hasn’t reached out to me after that to make it right. His crew does not mask off bricks next to where they are going to spray sealer. It leaves your bricks with shiny sealant on them too, not just the flooring. He does not supervise his crew at all. He only is there for the start of the job and arrives at the end and wants to be paid. I would not recommend him at all.

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The first time we contacted them, it took them a week to get back to us. Then I needed square footage, which I measured and called the next day to leave a message. I waited three days and called again and left another message. Then, several days later I received two text messages with cost estimates. There were no names, etc., I was just supposed to know who they came from I guess. They turned out to be twice as expensive as competition. We never responded to the text messages and they never tried to get hold of us, so clearly they have enough work.

The quality of their work stood out, and they showed up and did it. The interaction was fine. The owner comes out and does it, but he doesn't look like a typical business person, he looks a little shady, but he is a very nice person. The first time he came out, I was a little scared, and we used him, and he was a great fine. He just doesn't look the part, and he is always moving around, but he knows what he is doing, he does professional work, and he didn't take money before doing the work. He is very good at what he does. Professionally they were great.

When he was selling his product he was prompt. He had plenty of pictures of previous work. He seemed passionate about his work. After he and his crew got started it took a long time to finish. He got started in the spring and finished after Labor day. I never knew when they would be showing up to work. Since we were not in a hurry we did not mind so much. The entrance gate and the sitting wall were beautiful. The concrete work looked pretty. We asked him to put in more walls. We described to him what we wanted and he told us he could do it and that he would be in touch with us. We never heard from him again. Early this year we noticed some of the mortar he put over the concrete is chipping and breaking. We also noticed a big crack in the concrete of one of the patios he put in. I never called him about it.

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In the summer of 2014 we contacted Richard Berdych of Artistic Concrete regarding replacing some stones around our swimming pool that had begun flaking quite badly, leaving debris in the pool every time it rained. Richard came to our home and looked at the problem. He assured us that his company saw this issue quite often, and that he had developed a process to deal with it. Richard was very personable, and we had a long,pleasant talk with him. He showed us examples of projects his company has completed. As we began to feel more comfortable with him, we discussed other improvements to our home that he seemed able and willing to accomplish. One thing led to another and by the time we parted ways, Richard had bid on aprox. $5000 of work, to include power washing and sealing the stone in the pool area as well as replacing the deteriorating stones and mortar, and replacing or repairing the pool area grout, mortar, waterfall and retaining wall. In addition, we were interested in having a decorative concrete overlay installed on our front and back porches. This process is known as stamping. We told Richard that we would consider his quote and get back to him. A few days later I contacted Mr Berdych requesting references. He e-md' a list of companies and individuals that spoke favorably of his company's work. Not long after, we scheduled the work, paying a 50% of the total about 30 days out from the start date of the job. A few weeks later, Richard called and said that they were ready to begin. He arrived one morning and dropped off a rock mason who was to take care of repairing and replacing the damaged and deteriorating rock, mortar and grout. In a short conversation with the mason, I discovered that he is not an employee of Artistic Concrete, but a sub-contractor.This surprised me since Richard led us to believe that he had full time employees. At any rate this man, while a nice enough guy, did a very poor job in his 2 plus days at our home. He totally trashed our pool and spa twice, causing me to spend 5-6 hrs cleaning up the large amount of debris that he allowed to fall into the water. He made absolutely no attempt to keep anything out of the pool. When I called Richard about the matter he said something about putting on his scuba gear to clean the pool. I went back to cleaning the mess myself. I also mentioned that some of the stones that were to be replaced had not been touched. His response was that they now didn't need replaced and could be sealed instead. I asked the mason about trying to keep the pool clean and he told me "the next guys" did clean up. The next step in our project was the concrete stamping. This is where a thin layer of concrete was poured over our existing porches, and a decorative design (in our case one that looks like field stone) is "stamped" into the wet concrete. Again, a crew of sub-contractors arrived, again they made a mess and did a poor job, and again told us that the "next guys" would make it right. It was obvious that their goal was to get to the next job as fast as possible. As a result, the quality of the work done at our home suffered The final step was to color and seal the stamping, and to seal the rest of the job. I believe this was the first time we actually saw any Artistic Concrete employees. Unlike the previous workmen, these guys at least showed an interest in doing a good job and taking a little pride in their work. However, so much crummy work had been done ahead of them that when they called it a day and called the job complete there were many issues yet to be resolved. The mason had left several areas needing repair untouched, and a lot of the work he had done made things worse than when he started. For instance, there was a lot of grout smeared on the tile in the spa, and some of the grout he had replaced had been finished by swiping his finger thru it. The waterfall repair was a complete failure and looked worse than when he started. The rocks we had repeatedly asked to be replaced were still there, flaking badly The stamping crew had allowed excess concrete to run over the edges of the porches and left it to dry in an uneven mess. It looked terrible. We could see where they had used damaged, worn, stamping tools that pulled up the wet concrete and exposed the existing porch, making no attempt to do a proper job. I contacted Mr. Berdych and told him that I thought we were a long way from a finished product. He was very upset, but agreed to send a crew out to address our concerns. In a few days the same guys that I assume to be Artistic Concrete employees returned and worked several hours to try to salvage the job and clean up the mess. They worked hard and things looked a lot better when they were finished, although they again inexplicably left the deteriorating stones, opting to apply a large amount of sealer. A couple of days later, I paid Richard the balance due. At that time I requested that a receipt and warranty information be sent to me. After several days, and several e-mails and calls , Richard e-mailed what could almost pass for a receipt,and a one sentence explanation of the warranty on the stamping. At my insistence, he included a statement that the problematic stones that his crews had refused to replace would be removed and replaced as originally agreed should they continue to flake into the water. I repeatedly requested information about the warranty on the rest of the job, and Mr. Berdych simply ignored me. It seemed to me that once he was paid, he considered the matter closed. At the time of this review, I have nothing in writing regarding the warranty on the rock repair and sealing. In addition, as time goes by we have noticed things that weren't done properly, or not done at all. For instance, the wall on the end of the pool was repaired but never sealed. My advice to anyone considering hiring Artistic Concrete would be to get the name of the sub contractors Richard plans on using, and get specific references on them, instead of accepting references of Artistic Concrete as representative of the quality of work homeowners can expect. I'd recommend requiring warranty information up front and never paying the total bill until a full warranty was in hand. I'm doubtful that the warranty will be honored when problems arise, but at least you'd have something to take to court. If I had it to do over, we would have had Richard come to our home for a final inspection that included going over the estimate line by line so unfinished items wouldn't slip thru the cracks I would generously rate our overall experience with Artistic Concrete as a C minus. If our experience is typical, Richard Berdych is a great salesman, but in my opinion, a poor business operator. Once the money was in the bank, we were on our own. All in all a disappointing experience. UPDATE 3/30/2015........................... The sealing work done on the stone surrounding our pool began to fail almost immediately, and on October 18, 2015 I contacted Artistic Concrete and asked what could be done. On Oct. 20th, Richard messaged me that someone would be out "after November 1. After no contact for another 5 weeks, I e-mailed Richard on November 30, reminding him that something needed to be done. I also told him that the situation was getting worse, as the rock that had been sealed, and the sealer itself was flaking badly. On December 5th I was still asking for some help. Keep in mind that we had paid for the job in full back in September. Around Dec. 19th (may not be the exact date) a man I believe to be Richards foreman came to our home along with another Artistic Concrete employee and two rock masons we all looked over the pool area and everyone agreed that there were several problem areas. We agreed on a plan to give the area a full power wash to remove all remaining deteriorating rock and whatever sealer was still there, replace a few stones, and apply a different sealer. It was explained to me that the sealer used initially was not well suited to the type of rock we have. So....it finally looked like something was happening. The Artistic employees left the masons to do the work. The rock masons definitely made some headway, and progress was made. On 12/19 I received a voice mail from the foreman, telling me that the rocks were set and we were "on the schedule for the next week". I took this to mean that the sealer would be applied at that time, and maybe we could wrap things up. I heard nothing until January 30, when I texted the foreman to see if we were still "on the schedule". I got a response of "see you soon". We heard not a word for several more weeks, so on 3/16/2015, I texted Richards foreman again to let him know that since nothing had been done since the masons washed away any residual sealer back in December, more stone was flaking badly into the pool.I got no response so I e-mailed Artistic Concrete with the same info, and got the same response....nothing. Finally on the 29th of March, 2015, I texted Richards foreman and e-mailed Artistic Concrete to inform them that we had given up on them entirely and told them that Richard and / or his employees were not to return to our home. Miraculously, I got a response from Mr. Berdych. His take on the situation seems to be that the weather "has not been conducive" to complete the repairs.(Since OCTOBER 18th??REALLY?) He also reminded me that he has other customers. He agreed to honor our request to stay away from our home, and said he would not be liable for paying another contractor to fix the mess he left us with. So after 6 months we are back where we started, only with a much lighter wallet. I suggest anyone looking for a contractor to do this type do more interviews than we did.

Artistic Concrete & Masonry with Richard Berdych as manager has proven to be an exceptional contractor. In October 2012, Artistic Concrete & Masonry was contracted by the Winchester Hills Home Owners Association for three repair projects. One was the resetting of a wrought iron perimeter fence located in a flood-prone area. This required straightening of the fence and pouring a completely new concrete footing. A second project was the repair and beautifying of the openings for the gate control arms of the entrance gate house. The third project consisted of various repairs to the perimeter brick wall to include resetting brick and repairing mortar joints. This entailed 18 separate areas of repair. Since the brick wall is approximately 30 years old, matching the repair work to the existing structure was considered of utmost importance. For all three projects, Artistic Concrete & Masonry did a first-rate job. The concrete work was done in such a way that it is not expected any future problems will occur in the event of heavy rains. The brick work and mortar repairs were very well done and the color match proved better than had been expected considering the age of the original brick work. During the repair work, any concerns that were had by the Winchester Hills HOA were quickly resolved to our satisfaction. Even though the Winchester Hills HOA had to wait approximately 3 weeks before work could be started (Artistic Concrete & Masonry is a busy company and the Winchester Hills HOA was in no particular hurry), once work got started, everything was finished within 3 days. Not only was the work done to our satisfaction, but Artistic Concrete & Masonry was the lowest bidder! We highly recommend them to others and they will be our first choice for any future concrete or masonry needs.