Mountain Designscapes Inc

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My wife and I contracted Mountain Designscapes to redo much of the hardscaping that the prior homeowner either did themselves or had a subpar contractor perform.  We live on the side of mountain in Confier, and much of our property is on a pretty substantial grade.  As a result, we have drainage and washout issues around our driveway during heavy rain.  Additionally, we wished to have the remainder of or driveway paved (the portion in front of the garage was unpaved), two sidewalks, a set of steps, a retaining wall, and a patio redone in either pavers or natural stone.
We were planning on contracting in multiple phases, as our finances allowed us to bite of chunks of work.  In the first phase of work, we planned to finish the driveway and address the drainage problems we've been having.  That work involved cleaning out much of the loose material that had collected along our driveway over the course of a few years, installing a culvert and drainage pipe, paving the remainder of the driveway (approximately 2500 square feet), and putting a decorative paver border around the driveway with some landscape lighting.
First, the good.  The owner, Greg, worked with us extensively on designs on and off over the course of about a year, and was very flexible in chunking out the work into phases for us.  When we were finally ready to take on the first part of the project, he was able to get us scheduled quickly.  He was open about the work his crew would handle, and that which needed to be subbed out (the paving).  They completed the work on time, and were transparent during the bidding and contracting process.  The drainage work and paving both turned out nicely and more or less to my expectations.
The bad.  The finish work that they did around the driveway was extremely sloppy.  The pavers we used were laid crooked, the wiring for the landscape lighting was exposed, and the polymeric sand they used to hold everything together started crumbling less than a month after it was installed.  I expected that the pavers would be cut to conform to the curves of the driveway, and they were not.  Instead large gaps were left and filled in with sand.
Secondly, they did not do a good job of managing the sub that they brought in for paving.  We had laid out what we wanted paved, had sprayed lines on the ground where the edge of the paving was to occur, and the guys doing the paving completely changed the design.  Truthfully it turned out OK, but we had to adjust the rest of our plan to conform with the paving that was completed.
Thirdly, fill was used to build up the edge of the driveway where some of the paving occurred, and in doing so they buried the end of a drain pipe, resulting in flooding during heavy downpours.  They did fix this at their cost, but rather than digging up the old pipe and extending it, the left it buried and installed a new pipe.
Lastly, they ordered the wrong voltage transformer, and used extremely cheap landscape lights.  The bulbs in our landscape lighting kept blowing.  The owner sent his project manager out several times to try to diagnose the issue, but she was unable to do so.  It ultimately took me using a volt meter to determine that they were sending 24 volts into 12 volt lights.  I asked for an electrician to come diagnose the work, and at no point did that happen.
It was after all of this that my wife and I decided not to proceed with Mountain Designscapes for the remainder of the work.  We have contracted a separate company and they have had to rip up some of the work that was previously done.  I had several contractors that I had come to bid on the remainder of the work ask if I had done the paver work on my own, highlighting that whoever put that in did so without much care, and that it looked like a homeowner job.
Throughout all of this, Greg was pleasant to work with, seemed to genuinely care about helping us, but the quality of the finish work and the relative comedy of errors we experienced throughout scared us off from further work.  The contractor we have here now is taking much longer, doing a much better job, and is doing so for 25% less than the bid we received for the remainder of the work from Mountain Designscapes.

Their original bid was a good one.  Greg Rausch is the owner of this company and I really liked him.  He is a nice guy not necessarily a good business person.  At the one year warranty point the patio sunk an inch and the water feature was apparently leaking or doing something not right.  When he did the job, he did it by calculating this many bricks and half way through he came back and said that he had exhausted using all the bricks and that he needed more bricks.  So instead of bidding it by, this wall with whatever, he wrote this wall with this many bricks and that was very short.  We did add a couple of things on.  But from the original 29000 bricks I think 14000 was added on just because he was not a good estimator.  Then after a year the patio had sunk an inch and the water feature appeared to be leaking.  They came back pulled the bricks back and put sand down on the patio and corrected it.  They looked for a week, on the water feature and fixed something that might have been it.  Then told me that every time it snows or rains that I should cover the patio with a tarp to prevent it from sinking again.  Since then we have had the water feature remade because it constantly leaked, we had the patio re-done and put fabric along the edge so that sand does not come out when it sinks.  The trees have been planted too low and we had to go back  and have a tree people pull the dirt away from the root of all the trees.  So we spent an additional $2000 to fix the water feature, the patio was $2000 to fix, and the tree people we paid about $120 for the inspection and for them to come out.  We did the work.  He is a really nice guy.  But to cover up a patio with a tarp so that it does not sink seemed ridiculous.  Basically the one time he came out and fixed it was under warranty and pretty much told me it would not be covered from that time on. As for responsiveness it took me a long time to get him to come out.  I had to make several phone calls and his excuse was that he was on his honey moon.  As for professionalism he had me leave the down payment on the windshield of his car.  I will not use this company in the future.

The river rock was not the color specified and far more was delivered than the job required.  We removed the several tons of excess river rock to other areas on our lot.  The retaining wall estimate was about 1/3 short of what was specified, and we were billed for the additional wall pavers. My wife found it necessary to relocate several of the xeriscape plants. The overall effect was satisfactory, however, but perhaps a bit more costly than necessary.

I had a good experience with them. I enjoyed Greg, the owner, I liked working with them. The experience has been positive. I had another quote from another company and the prices were comparable. The work was done quickly in about 2 and promptly with in a couple of days of agreeing on the cost and scope of work.

On time, in budget, Very professional

The work was preformed under the direct supervision of a Landscape Architect. This was great he really knew what he was doing and explained everything very detailed to me. They did a great job, got work done on time and in a timely manner. Kept the site neat and clean. Everyone at the company we came in contact with was very nice and acted in a professional manner. Very reasonably priced for all the work we got done.