American Deck

Apologies in advance for the long description. We searched other providers, but selected this company based on the recommendation of a friend who had a deck done by their partner in Baltimore. He said just go with them. We did, We had a large replacement deck built, adding a large sun room, in the back and a large porch in front. The price was high ($100,000), but our friend said just go with it; that they did good work and it would be worth it. We agreed that we needed county inspections and filed the project with the County. The planning and drawing steps went well. Andy Lombardo was very helpful with recommendations for the structures and materials. His designs were innovative and creative. He does have a nasty habit of being as much as an hour late for meetings, though. They started on the foundation of the deck and immediately placed the beam supporting most of the weight of the deck on the ground where all of the drainage would be routed through. I told him that was a bad idea (I built the original deck) and he advised me that he had built decks for 30 years and knew what he was doing. Needless to say, it failed the first inspection and had to be corrected. They often would make assurances on small to medium effort items (like where the drain pipe would release water from the roof, the height of the deck, aligning a post, finish work where the roof of the sunroom integrated with the roof of the house) that took several reminders to be accomplished. They did really nice work structurally but would take odd, unacceptable shortcuts on seemingly trivial items, like finish work where the roof and existing siding connected. The first two attempts were really bad. The third time was the charm. They put bare boards at the base of the deck to keep the drainage stones in place, but the entire rest of the deck had a finished, polished look. The porch had a different color of weatherproof boards than the deck, but they used a leftover board from the deck for the railcap of the porch. In the end, when it was time for final payment, there was no final walkthrough. He picked up the check taped to the front door and left without a word. A little overpriced, but the final product is very nice. I gave it a B because of some of the weak solutions applied to some of the problems that detract from the final product. I would not select this company again. For the price I paid, I expected a much better experience.