Southwest Stucco

Two years after Southwest Stucco provided a stucco job to my home with at a huge price tag, my husband and I began noticing numerous cracks in the stucco (more than 15).  We finally got Craig Exum, the manager, to come over and examine the stucco.  After numerous calls, his workers performed the repair.  Not long after, in another part of the house multiple cracks appeared.  This time it was nearly impossible to reach Craig even after leaving messages on his phone and texts.  There were appointments set up and missed with no calls to explain.  Finally his workers came and began the second repair leaving a gray undercoat on huge sections of the house and not even bothering to throw out empty bags that were left.  Despite my constant calling, Craig Exum never got back to finish the job and my house now is two toned - tan stucco and large areas of gray undercoat.  I went to Small Claims Court, won a settlement of the cost of the job to finish the work - $1400 and have not heard a word of Craig Exum to pay the settlement or finish the work.  Southwest Stucco provided inferior service at a very high cost, showed no respect for his customers, and absolutely no professtionalism.

We hired Dan Shelton, owner of Southwestern Stucco Services, to restucco the exterior of
our house. He sent an estimate on April 13; we contacted him on June 10 to
schedule the work; and his crew began work on June 24. Initially things seemed
good; Dan was communicative, the crew arrived on time, and seemed friendly and
accommodating. We gave him an initial check for half the estimate of $9250 (not
including tax).
The first problem was when the crew dumped leftover concrete on the lawn. I asked them
not to do that, and they said they wouldn?t. I cleaned up the spill
myself?which had already dried and hardened?and transplanted grass plugs to
cover the bare patch.
The second problem was with the external light fixtures. Dan had told me that the crew
would take down the light fixtures, mask windows and other items, and trench
around the base of the house as part of the prep. But we noticed the crew was
simply stuccoing over the light fixtures at the back of the house; so we went
out at lunch and took the fixtures down ourselves. They were covered in stucco,
so I had to clean them. However, we forgot to take down the security lights at
the front of the house; those are now cemented to the house. The crew stuccoed
over the mounting brackets for the lights, so we had to chip off all the stucco
before we could put the light fixtures back up. They also stuccoed shut two
water spigots, which I had to chip out with a chisel and hammer.
The third problem was at the end of the first week, when the crew was working at the side
of the house where we have 2 compressor units for the AC. The crew set up a
catwalk about 4 inches above the cooling fan of one of the units, and left it there
when they quit work mid-day Saturday. The unit overheated and shut itself down.
I noticed this late Sunday morning when the inside of the house was 78 degrees,
and the AC was set at 72. I also found that the drain hose (which ended about 3
feet from the house wall) was stuccoed shut. I told Dan that the AC unit was
busted when he came by early the following week, and told him that we would
have to call out a repairman. He acknowledged this, and he noted that the drain
house should have been masked. Repairs for the AC unit came to $170, which was
not nearly as bad as it could have been. The blocked drain hose caused the
condensation pump to burn out, and it had to be replaced, but the cooling fan
had a failsafe switch inside the housing and only needed to be reset.
The fourth problem was when we found that the crew was using the 1 ½? landscaping stones
for a wastewater dump; the stones are now completely covered in dried concrete.
When I saw the crew doing this, I asked them not to; and they said no problem,
and they would clean it up. They didn?t. I have now removed most of it myself,
and am waiting to have it hauled off as it is only good for fill at this point.
It is going to cost about $260 for the 2 cubic yards of replacement landscaping
stones.
The sixth problem is the front wall of the house, the last wall that the crew finished.
Within 72 hours of the crew?s last day, this wall showed long horizontal
cracks. Four weeks later, there are numerous horizontal cracks running the
entire length of the wall, as well as vertical cracks from the corners of the
windows to the ground, and a bulging area near the ground. The cracks are
actually big enough that they are visible from the street, some 40 feet away.
The crew had taken the extra step of completely recovering this wall in
building paper and chicken wire, because underneath was half wood siding, half
painted-over stucco, so we were surprised to see so much cracking.
When the crew finished work, Dan was out of town on a 10-day vacation. He did not
inspect any of the finished work. We did not hand over the check for the
balance due to the crew; we had told Dan that when he got back in town we would
let him know what the repairs cost and we could settle up then. He agreed. Dan
contacted us on July 13 and asked for payment. We let him know that same day
what the AC repairs and landscaping stone replacement would cost us, gave him a
copy of the repair invoice, and asked that he adjust the invoice to reflect
those costs.
I also told him that while most of the work was fine, there was a lot of cracking on
the front wall of the house and asked that he come out and look at it. Dan
agreed to cover the costs for our repairs and sent an adjusted invoice on July
14, but he did not acknowledge our request that he come check the wall that was
cracking.
Dan said he could not come to the house to collect the check because he was dealing with
a family emergency, and asked that we mail the check. We said OK, and asked
again about the cracking. He said he would come look at it once he had his
check (in hindsight, this was a huge red flag). We sent Dan a check via Wells
Fargo bill pay on July 14, the same day that we received the adjusted invoice.
We emailed him to let him know the check was on its way and asked again that he
come check the cracking as soon as his family situation allowed. Dan still did
not acknowledge our concern about the cracking. On July 20 Dan emailed us that
he had not received his check. We checked with the bank, and they confirmed
that the check had been sent. We also asked again to have Dan check the
cracking. Dan then acknowledged receiving the check, but did not respond to our
request that he come check the cracking. We asked again, and received the
following reply: "As per the promptness of payment, give me about 3
weeks."
This initiated a long email exchange in which, among other things, Dan accused us of
lying about the damage to the AC compressor, said he did not intend to come out
at all because he "did not want to be blamed for anything else," and
suggested that we hire some of his guys ourselves and pay them to come out and
redo the work.
 
We tried for more than two weeks to get him to agree to come out and at least look at
the front wall, to no avail. I have asked repeatedly if he intends to honor the
5-year warranty he gave us on the work, and he refuses to address it. I am now
so frustrated that I gave in and filed a complaint with the Better Business
Bureau, but I expect that we will have to hire another stucco contractor to
either repair or cover the cracking. We still have to have the trim painted, and I can't wait all summer to resolve issues with this one contractor to finish all the other work.
While most of the stucco work looks fine, it is pretty uneven overall; and the crew did so much
damage, and with the one wall that is already failing, and the unfathomable
belligerence of the owner, I would never in a million years recommend hiring
this contractor.

UPDATE: It is 6 weeks since the crew finished work, and there are wide cracks on every wall that was lathed. The stucco at the front of the house is crumbling off, and we have still been unable to persuade the contractor to even come and look at the problem.

UPDATE: After two months of wrangling through the BBB, the contractor finally agreed to come out and look at the problem. When he saw it, he agreed that it was not acceptable and promised to make repairs. It is now 4 months since Mr. Shelton's crew "finished," and 8 weeks since he promised to repair the cracked walls.  I waited 2 weeks a

We are very pleased  with the final result and highly recomment Craig Exum and Southwest Stucco to anyone planning to restucco their home.

It's a smaller company, but they came out and did a great job.  They were considerably less expensive than some of the larger companies, but there work was top notch.  They clean up after the job also.  I couldn't be happier.  The job was done 8 years ago, and I haven't had any problems since.