Amy in Charlottesville

We love the folks at Ivy Landscaping! Keith is always on time, helpful, and incredibly good at what he does. We've had him do a ton of odd jobs around our property including tree removal, firewood cutting, leveling and grading, pond filling in, rock moving, you name it. He's absolutely one of the best landscaping contractors I've ever had.

We contracted Ron upon a recommendation of a family member to do some painting for us- namely painting the exterior of our home and a hallway. Unfortunately, we had to have him return several times due to poor workmanship. I gave up on the inside hallway and cleaned up the significant numbers of paint splashes and drips on my furniture and walls, but the outside was another issue. He ran out of paint halfway through the exterior due to poor estimations of material involved. Since he "didn't trust" the computer at Home Depot to mix the color properly, he insisted the employees hand mix it. Sorry, but Home Depot employees probably are NOT qualified to mix paint by hand.... There are still parts on the house where the colors are different from one siding board to the next. A lot of this has been remedied by the fact that the bad parts are on the west side of the house and the sun has lightened and faded it a bit, but it still drives me nuts. Basically, don't hire him.

We contracted with ADT and Phillip Houchens for security services in our new home five years ago. They were very professional and honest (Phillip even talked us *out* of some items he didn't feel we needed- that's a first!) and installed the security system proficiently and well. Just a generally good experience- nothing exceptional here, but they're great.

We have, in our neighborhood, a driveway which is well known for it's slope. Extending about a quarter of a mile straight up a mountain, the driveway is pretty much a paver's worst nightmare. However, not only did the guys at Precision Paving take the job, they LOVED it! Specializing in difficult driveways, these guys are great. They gave us extra asphalt on our hill to make sure it would stay, and they rolled it several times (anchoring the roller with ropes and chains due to the slope). They were courteous, polite, and did a fantastic job.

We hired Robert from the Piedmont area Critter Control to come take care of some....unwanted guests in our attic. It ended up that we had a significant flying squirrel problem, and Robert worked with us for about a month to solve the problem. He was always extremely professional, punctual, and courteous. Even though I had just had a baby and own a completely insane dog, the folks at Critter Control were never phased by the madness at the house. We contracted with them to clean the attic after they efficiently eliminated all the squirrels and patched all the holes, and they did an awesome job. Most places would just sweep and call it a day, but Robert was in our attic for about eight hours with a putty knife and a vacuum, among other things. It looks immaculate. We can't say enough great things about these people!