Hi, My front yard landscaping project is becoming a nightmare, I am wondering how should I proceed.
The project is to overhaul the current front yard by building a new retaining wall, re-do the irrigation and plant some bushes.
We invited 6-7 landscaping companies to bid for the project and select the lowest price. ( this might be a mistake ). Anyway the guy said it would take him a lettle bit over 2 days to finish the job. His price is $2600 and he ask $300 down. We paid him $300 that day.
At the end of the first day, the retaining wall is built up, but we can see very obvious seam between the wall and the concrete drive way of our neighbor.
So the next day we told the guy we prefer the bottom of the wall to touch the concrete line. He said he would re-do it.
But as he re-do the wall, we found that somehow it is not on a straight line and the surface of the wall is not flat either. We ask him how come it is like this.
He says 2 things, first, it is because of the stone is not uniformed, some are wider, some are higher; second, he think the wall looks beautiful.
We let him finish the wall, but it is too ugly. What we see is a twisted line and the top stone surface is tilted.
But he still says he likes the wall. And then he says it is the problem of the stone which he bought from Home Depot.
We contacted Home Depot, the manager sends a guy together with the stone company representative over and he agree to give us refund.
We tell the landscaper we will have a one week travel and we ask him to resume the work right after we are back which is this monday and finish it, he agreed.
After we are back, we ask the landscaper to return the stone, he ask for extra money for the labor to remove the current wall, return the stone, buy new stone and re-build the wall. We agree to pay him about $300 depending on the time he will spend on this.
But he said he is working on another project now, he would remove the wall and return the stone today, Tuesday and come back to build the new wall on Saturday.
My wife does not think it is fair, saying to him that with so much dirt in front of the home it will be very messy if there is rain or wind, and he already agreed to resume the project once we are back. But this guy hang up the phone, very rude.
We leave a message to this guy if he does not call us by tonight we assume he will not want to continue on the project any more. So far we do not receive his phone call.
Now we are considering to look for other landscapers to resume the job. But I can see it will be a hassel that this guy will come back to ask for the labor he already did. How to do the labor break-down then? He did not finish the job even we take the current wall, because irrigation is not finished and no bushes are planted.
Any suggestion is really appreciated.