G&B Masonry

If I knew 3 months ago, what I know now, I would not just walk away from Bruno's company (G & B Masonry) I'd run.  Whilst I was looking around for a mason to remove my basement floor and pour new concrete for a polished floor, Bruno came & did the quote.  He spoke as though he knew what he was talking about.  Reviews on his company were scant, though they weren't great, there were no bad reviews.  The price was equivalent to the others. As a homeowner with no experience in concrete laying, I didn't know that the basement floor should have been a steel trowel finish.  I thought that the polishing guys would just grind it down to even it out.  It appears that is not the case.  The finish makes a lot of difference.  The finish I got was a magma finish, it had waves of concrete on the surface, which even after being ground down, the lines were still visible.  Bruno's excuse for the finish was that the polishing company he was going to contract (Eastern Concrete Polishing) told him that was all that was required (against his better judgement, supposedly).  As it turns out, that particular polishing company couldn't get their 900 lb machines down because there wasn't enough clearance.  To boot, this same company told me that the concrete was badly poured and that it needs to be repoured, to which Bruno said, "Not happening." My carpenter suggested control joints be cut to prevent uncontrolled cracking of the concrete.  Everything went south after that.  Bruno said that diamonds would be cut around the lally columns and lines from each wall would meet them at the points.  Well, he didn't do the cutting, his workers did.  They cut huge squares around the columns & the lines from the walls met the squares perpendicularly.  The theory of having the lines from the wall meet the diamonds/squares at the point was to redirect any cracks away from the lally column, but Bruno assured me this will work anyway. The squares they cut were so skewed, one would not miss it.  Each polishing company I spoke to said that the lines could not be hidden, regardless of what we did.  No one could offer any suggestion other than to remove the whole thing and start over. I decided that I would not be happy with having skewed lines.  I asked my carpenter to cut the squares around those that were there but symmetrically, of course.  I told Bruno that he had to cut those squares out & repour the cement.  He had the tools and know how, who else should do it?  I had already paid my carpenter one whole day to cut the lines, should I now pay him or someone else to correct what Bruno should have corrected?  BIG mistake!  He dug up one inch of concrete and left, and I thought, surely he isn't finished?  Not knowing when he would return I went and ran some errands, and when I got back, he'd already filled the cement in.  He had the perfect opportunity to redeem himself, but again, he took the easiest route for himself at my expense.  I asked him if this were sufficient?  He said it was and that it won't crack.  I was experiencing chest tightness at this point and wanted to remove the cement before it had time to set, but my carpenter talked me out of it and told me to ask the polishing company what they thought.  The polishing company couldn't tell me either way, so we went ahead with the polishing.  We had some issues trying to match the colors of the squares with the rest of the concrete, when we did finally get what was best, things went well, then the cracks started to appear from the lally columns to the edge of the squares which was what we were trying to prevent with the lines in the first place.  We wouldn't have had these issues had the cement been properly poured and the control joints correctly cut.    This floor costed $10000, and it's already cracked before it's even finished.  So I say to all those who read this, don't just walk, RUN!

Great job.

unknown

Very reasonable! Good people! Will use them again!