A&A Masonry

A&A did redid an existing basement walkout at the front of the house for me in November of 2014. There was an ambiguous specification on the work order that was interpreted incorrectly by the crew leader, which resulted in the walkout being somewhat narrower than originally conceived. I only caught the error after the concrete had been poured. The work stopped while I contacted Darren to discuss the options.

Darren suggested two options: one was to take out everything done so far and start over, and the other was to keep this narrower walkout, and as compensation, the company would do some other work, such as brickwork in the yard, in the spring. Because I don't like waste, and I felt we could live with the narrower walkout even though it's not ideal, I opted for the latter and trusted that Darren and the company would be true to their word and make it right in the spring.

They were paid in full, the weather turned cold and my focus turned away from the yard. Fast forward to spring of this year, and after all the snow melted I realized what a disaster the front was as a result of the work they did: shrubs uprooted and flagstones buried under a foot of dirt. This is understandable because it's a small yard and they didn't have a lot of room to do the work. However, there was also a large piece of concrete left in the middle of the yard, and with it there, I could not do any work in the yard to fix the mess they left.

I contacted A&A in early May with a suggestion of what they could do as compensation for the error on the walkout and to ask them to remove the concrete waste. I heard nothing for weeks. I then left frequent messages and finally heard from them and they promised that the work would be done in a certain week (it wasn't), then another week (it wasn't), that the worker would contact me (he didn't).

UPDATE: This past week (June 15-19), they have removed the concrete waste, and in addition, have added another concrete step that I needed and they repaired some parging. I feel that this is fair compensation for the mistake made in the original work. It's unfortunate, however, that it took a poor review in Homestars to finally get the work done. I can't give them a really high rating because I feel it shouldn't have taken weeks from first contact this spring to get the additional work done. Although this experience was not entirely satisfactory, I gather from other reviews that this is not the norm for this company and I would hire them again.

A&A did redid an existing basement walkout at the front of the house for me in November of 2014. There was an ambiguous specification on the work order that was interpreted incorrectly by the crew leader, which resulted in the walkout being somewhat narrower than originally conceived. I only caught the error after the concrete had been poured. The work stopped while I contacted Darren to discuss the options.

Darren suggested two options: one was to take out everything done so far and start over, and the other was to keep this narrower walkout, and as compensation, the company would do some other work, such as brickwork in the yard, in the spring. Because I don't like waste, and I felt we could live with the narrower walkout even though it's not ideal, I opted for the latter and trusted that Darren and the company would be true to their word and make it right in the spring.

They were paid in full, the weather turned cold and my focus turned away from the yard. Fast forward to spring of this year, and after all the snow melted I realized what a disaster the front was as a result of the work they did: shrubs uprooted and flagstones buried under a foot of dirt. This is understandable because it's a small yard and they didn't have a lot of room to do the work. However, there was also a large piece of concrete left in the middle of the yard, and with it there, I cannot do any work in the yard to fix the mess they left.

I contacted A&A in early May with a suggestion of what they could do as compensation for the error on the walkout and to ask them to remove the concrete waste. I heard nothing for weeks. I then left frequent messages and finally heard from them and they promised that the work would be done in a certain week (it wasn't), then another week (it wasn't), that the worker would contact me (he didn't). As spring is quickly turning to summer, my front yard is still a pile of concrete rubbish and dirt. While I'm loathe to give up on A&A and spend more money to have the concrete removed, I may have to go that route in order to restore my yard before the fall.

Final verdict: they failed on the execution and failed on the follow-through.