Tuckpointing by Marion Inc

Most excellent and professional. Worth the money.

Just as their work always goes...smoothly, professionally, with attention to detail and cleanliness. They come when they say they will be there. They finish about when they say they will. If you have an historic property, they ar the very best around. We have used them estqensively for replacing rotted lintels behind decorative terra cotta. They are uniformaly good. The price is not the lowest, but the work is superb. Cannot rcommend them highly enough, particularly for historic properties.

In 2013, water spots began appearing on the ceiling of the top floor of my building. A roofer ascertained that it was a problem with the parapet, not the roof. I called Tuckpointing by Marion, because they had done work for me before. Since it was too late in the season, and then very busy, they weren't able to do the work until October of this year. As before, they did a beautiful job and left a clean job site. They have always been professional in their communication, always responding in good time.
There is more work to be done on this old building, and I plan to use this company again.

The quality of the work is excellent. Replacement brick were found that are a near perfect match and they were installed by highly skilled and meticulous craftsmen. The repointing of existing brick required very careful removal of cement mortar to avoid damaging the brick. This is quite tricky to do, but the workers did a great job.
The work was also completed in a way that was minimally disruptive to the neighbors or to my family living in the house.
John Machnicki is incredibly knowledgable about historic masonry and restoration techniques. He is also very meticulous to ensure that the finished restoration is of the highest quality. In addition, John was very helpful in identifying firms in other trades that could do high quality work on the other aspects of our restoration project.

The quality of work was very good. I had some interaction with them while they were working and they were very accommodating. One day they were working our building and we had so much going on, it was kind of crazy around here and they were so flexible and accommodating. I was so impressed and they kept together the fact that they couldn't walk out of the courtyard the way they wanted to because we had freshly poured concrete. I thought it was pretty great of them that they didn't make an issue of it. They did a good job.

The big attraction for using Tuckpointing by Marion Inc., despite their higher price, was their ability to perform the work without disturbing our clay tile roof and they suceeded very well through the positioning of protective materials and scaffolds. They were also recommended by a friend and we had been impressed with their work on a neighbor's house. Marion's crew was very efficient and completed the work in one day and returned the next day to remove forms from the concrete cap and check the basement area for any problems. They also did an excellent job of matching bricks and mortar which was important to us as owners of a historic Chicago bungalow.

Tuckpointing by Marion did an excellent job. I had them do an estimate two years ago, and their number was the mid-range of three estimates I got. Part of the work was done at that time, and the rest was completed this year. They kept in touch with me by phone to keep me abreast of what was going on. They kept such a tidy work area that my neighbor was even impressed by it! I hope I won't need Marion again for a while, but when I do, I will call them, and I would recommend their work to friends.

John came to give us the original estimate. He took the time to explain why our walls were in bad shape and what could be done to ensure the integrity of the walls for years to come. He actually taught us quite a bit about brick bungalows in the process. We told him we did not want to invest a lot of money in repairs at this time and he laid out the options for us. We had 5 other estimates done and John's professionalism and attention to our needs and bid price won the contract for him and his team. They did a really nice job. Came on time and cleaned up after the days work. We think we got a lot of work done for the price.

Basically the job looks good. I really had to ride hard on the owner to make sure the job was completed. They left twice without the job being completed. I don't think the quality is what they say it is in the brochures. They have a great package, great information on tuckpointing. I was watching to see if they were doing what they say they do in their folder and they weren't. They were slapping stuff in without moving the old tuckpointing. They said you have to hose down the work for a few days afterward. They weren't doing that; they weren't coming back. I had a sit down with the owner and he wormed his way out of it. He made it case specific. He said what I read about was a total masonry restoration. He basically kept making excuses and worming his way out of it. I chose to hang around and have them finish the job. The work looks good, they did a neat job, and it is pretty well masked with the old tuckpointing. I am not exactly sure what quality of work I actually got. I was not there 100% of the time. Even after all of that there was still uncompleted work. I can still see holes in the side of the building. They had the potential to earn three times as much money from me if I was happy with them. I was amazed that they did not look hard to see that the job was done. I will not call them back to do the rest of the house. They have the knowledge and their materials show they are experience having a lot of depth to it. It seems they pick and choose where they do a good job. They have a really good sell. It was disappointing to see they did not do a good job. $5000 of the $6000 was budgeted to tear out the steel lintels above eight windows. That was a huge part of the job. I was surprised they budgeted only $1000 for the tuckpointing. It seemed to me they low balled the estimate. I am judging they realized to late and therefore they rushed the job.