Mr. Fernandez and his team delivered a beautiful, functional space in natural stone and bluestone. We spent about 3 years evaluating and planning how to deal with some drainage issues on our property that were making our yard area largely useless. We had areas of constant mud and wetness, even through hot august droughts. The kids couldnt play in certain areas without losing sneakers in brownie-mix mud. And flash flooding was problematic with every summer thunderstorm to make it worse. We had an engineer (a relative) draw up some plans for drainage that would remedy the situation. It included a retaining wall along the property on a hillside, extensive drainage across several areas of the property, and ripping up previous drainage lines installed by the previous owners that couldn't handle the water (it turns out they were done horribly wrong).
We interviewed about 7 lanscaping companies, and got written proposals from 5, describing the requirements outlined by the engineer and our wish list for cosmetic improvements that would make the yard more usable and give us more space. Two of the 7 insisted the engineer didn't know what he was talking about and wanted to put in much lower capacity drainage; and one would only give a verbal price, wouldn't put it in writing. We dropped those. Mr Fernandez estimate was right in the middle of the estimates, which ranged by about 50% from highest to lowest. But what stood out about Mr. Fernandez estimate is that he proposed, at that middle price range, a bluestone patio and natural stone walls with bluestone caps. Everyone else proposed pavers and techo-style block walls. The most expensive proposal was proposing bluestone and quot;styleand quot; pavers. It seemed insane to me to use concrete pavers made to look like bluestone for more money than actual bluestone.
We had a very good idea, design wise, of what we wanted to do, in addition to the drainage engineering. I will note that some of the other contractors brought CAD diagrams etc of what they were proposing. Mr Fernandez doesn't do that. But in the end, a pretty piece of paper doesn't balance out to me the look of pavers vs. natural stone. I'm not sitting on my blueprint having a BBQ, I'm sitting on my bluestone patio.
We selected Mr. Fernandez, based on price and also based on the fact that he did a co-workers bluestone patio and sitting wall. I got to see his work and I was impressed. We did go back and forth several times on the contract to ensure that it was clear and detailed enough for my detail oriented personality. (I am quite picky) Mr Fernandez crew started within two days of our planned start date (rain delays on his previous project pushed us back a little).
One they started, Mr. Fernandez' crew and equipment were there on the job, without fail, from the start of the project until 95% done. HIs backhoe, equipment truck, a concrete tumbler, and at least one dumptruck were on site the entire duration of the project. His crew of between 6 and 12 people were there at least 6 days a week, including saturdays and a few sundays, from 7:30 AM until 5. We had a one day rain delay, and one weekend they had a social event and he told me ahead of time. There was never an issue of and quot;we returned the leased backhoeand quot; or and quot;we can't do X because we're waiting on a piece of equipmentand quot;. They came in like an army and worked tirelessly. This was a pleasant surprise, as I've had the experience of the contractor who shows up, demos part of your house, then disappears for a week and a half before they start working again. The last portion of work they did leave before completing, which was just to reinstall the handrails, and they were back in 3 days to finish that and do the final walkthrough. The entire job took about 5 weeks.
Mr. Fernandez himself was a pleasure to deal with as a contractor... he is even keeled, communicative, accessible, and just simply easy to deal with. Definitely not one of the barking, know it all, constant excuse contractors I've had the displeasure of dealing with on other large projects. He dealt with the inevitable surprises that arose without any issues, and we were able to add additional work to the project (cosmetic items that we held off on to see how the core work looked) without any issues.