Custom Crete Decks

The job was contracted on 9-23-13. We were promised that the deck would be complete before Thanksgiving 11-28-13. Since the pavers are custom made, installation did not begin until 11-12-13. The crew arrived unannounced, requiring us with the crews assistance to put deck furniture, barbeque and planters outside of the screen room and in the garage. We had been promised that the cutting of the pavers would all take place, outside the screen room, except for the cutting of the original pool coping, which they said would be minimal. We were led to believe that the pool would be covered or some floating collector would be used to minimize the pool contamination. That did not happen. The old coping was cut off and most pieces dropped in the pool. Although some cutting was done at a table saw outside the pool cage (with the saws discharge directed at our house and pool filter), the majority of the cutting took place inside the screen room with portable saws. There was a cloud of concrete particles most the day, and the pool was now totally brown. We asked the crew to cut outside the pool area, but in broken English they said that "this is the way it's done." Fortunately, we covered all our sliders and doors in plastic on the outside, otherwise the inside of the house would have been infiltrated with concrete dust. The crew worked until dusk and completed the laying of all the pavers except an area the owner was to shape and finish. The deck was sanded and washed. The next day we noticed that many of the pavers were not level with others, and there were numerous areas where the sand was not in filled in between the pavers. We had seen one of the homes where they finished the deck and we observed unfilled lines between the pavers. We had made it clear that we did not want that with our finished product. The sales person, Bob, assured us they would make sure they were filled. We tried to call numerous times to schedule the next time they would come, expecting it to be the next couple of days. We basically had to stay at home waiting in case they were to show up. Five days later, they arrived with a pool service person. He said it was the worst clean up he'd seen from a paving job. He was ill equipped for the job. The boss, Bill, was supposed to have supplied an inline filter but he didn't have it. They used my filter and blew the seal on the pump, requiring it to be fixed. They claimed that it was already leaking. Finally, the pool service worker brought in his own pump and discharged what he vacuumed onto the lawn. When he was finished, it was not completely clean. We were still pulling out concrete dust and chunks for weeks. The preliminary work was done after Thanksgiving. Several more times a crew came to break out pavers in order to level them. Twice the pavers were resanded, acid washed and sealed. The job was completed on January 3, 2014. Three hours later the boss/owner, Bill, was there to get the second half of the payment. This was the man that we would try to call in each of the steps to remedy the problem and to determine when they were coming, without success. They would just show up early in the morning. We were advised by one of the subcontractors and by someone who had a similar job finished, said that the manufacturer had difficulties in making the center squares in in the Bishops Hat pattern uniformly thick with he rest of the pavers. The crews were aware of this . But this accounted for the numerous time-consuming irregularities. The job was completed and is a beautiful addition to our home, but the process and unprofessionalism of the owners and some of the crew was unacceptable. I was glad that we refused to advance the second payment, until everything was completed to our satisfaction.The finished product is what we expected to occur over a month before. There is no excuse for their bad behavior.