Lovestrand Construction

Lovestrand Construction had a yellow page ad saying that they did "Driveways, Patios, Sidewalks, Retaining Walls, Hauling, Foundations, Footings, Concrete Removal, Excavation, Backhoe & Dump Truck Service, 30 years experience," and they offered free estimates, so my husband called to have him come give us an estimate for what we needed done. Roland Lovestrand arrived as scheduled and wrote out an estimate of his services, amounts of material needed, the cost for the job, and the starting date. Half of his fee was to be paid at the beginning of his work, on June 21st, and the balance when the job was completed. He arrived with three employees (two of whom spoke no English) on June 21st to begin the job. Most of them were hard workers, even when Roland was not present (though he was here quite a bit to operate the heavy equipment). They worked full days, arriving when expected, and stuck with it until the job was completed -- which was important to us. The work they did looked nice when they were finished. The reason we lowered their overall grade was because my husband had given them instructions regarding sloping the concrete properly for water drainage, and discovered (at the first rainfall) that it had not been done as he wanted, so the water pools where it shouldn't. Either Roland had not passed on the instructions to his crew, or the employees had not understood or remembered it. Roland was not here to oversee at that particular point in the project. We also discovered (within a week of their leaving) that the grass near the driveway was turning yellow and appeared to be damaged. Concrete residue was found in the lawn over that area, which led us to the conclusion that the workers had rinsed out their equipment there. In spite of these two problems, my husband said he would probably hire Lovestrand again if we had future projects, but would make sure that his wishes were understood and would be honored (such as the sloping for water drainage) and that there definitely would be no more rinsing of equipment on our lawn.