Three Rivers Custom Decks

Three Rivers performed the work in an exceptionally competent and efficient manner. Workers Dave and Mike were professional, thoughtful in their approach and listened to my needs. They came up with some innovative solutions to blend the replacement work into an existing deck. Would definitely hire this team again, from the builders to the office staff!

This is the contracting experience everyone would like and few people get. I called in late March to try to get this job done by mid-May, with a hard stop at June 1. I am writing this review on April 20 and the decks are done and beautiful. I had some sticker shock from the quote, but Jim spent considerable time emailing with me to refine my plan into something that met my budget. These guys really know their materials, which helped me narrow down what to use and which color. The work itself went really smoothly, with at least 2 and usually 3 guys working every weekday from teardown to completion. They put down boards to keep from wearing trenches into my soggy yard, they schlepped materials up an unpaved slope on foot, they cleaned up at the end of every day, and they were so nice every time the GFCI tripped on the rainy days and I had to reset it for them. They dealt with several minor challenges from my aging siding and uneven yard and delivered a rock-solid deck that I will never have to stain or seal again. They VACUUMED MY YARD to clear away the plastic dust, sawdust, and loose insulation from cutting up the hot tub. I couldn't be more pleased.

Everyone at Three Rivers Custom Decks was very professional and always on time. First a visit to draw/review the graphics, second a visit from their engineer to verify design and construction, third the demolition team hauled away the old deck, four the build team built the decks and railing, and fifth one more visit for tough up. Our decks consisted of a house level upper deck and a lower level pool level deck connected by a stairway. Railing separated the upper deck from the lower deck, enclosed the lower deck, and about half of the swimming pool. Their workmanship was near perfect. The cost was higher than another contractor, but we went with Three Rivers Custom Decks because of the high ratings with Angie's List. And, we are very satisfied their work and the customer orientated attitude of the whole team.

Everything went completely according to schedule except for a brief weather delay due to excessive hear. This was not an issue for us and of course the crew can't work in 95 plus degree weather...just not safe for them. Crew was prompt, professional and maintained our property well...cleaned up and picked up after themselves at the end of the workday. We are thrilled with the results, love the look and feel of the new deck and have just contacted the company to do the same kind of work on our lower deck.

Three Rivers original quote included all the information I needed to make an informed decision. It included material suggestions, samples as well as a building plans. The onsite crew were professional, meticulous and very efficient! The results are outstanding!

Amazing! We are so glad we picked Three Rivers. They did an outstanding job rebuilding our deck, and we are in love with it! Jim was amazing about answering all of our questions beforehand (we had a lot), and helping us pick the best material for our needs. He gave us a fair price that was actually a bit lower than some of the competitors, but we chose Three Rivers because we felt their professionalism and expertise made them stand out from the competition. The Three Rivers crew worked very hard in inclement weather and were very thorough and professional. They were genuinely nice guys who were very respectful of us and our home. The project took a few weeks longer than originally planned as our old home had a few unexpected warts we had to deal with, but the crew kept us informed as to why and went the extra mile to ensure we'd be happy. The deck itself is truly stunning, and built beautifully. It's been a few months, and we still are amazed every time we walk outside. We can't say enough about our experience or how happy we are with the product and service. We highly recommend partnering with Three Rivers for your decking needs!

I could not be happier with the final results......Dave and his crew were friendly, helpful, professional.......Jim Gates, owner, always answered my e-mails promptly and was considerate of my concerns. Good company!

Jim Gates, the owner, Matt and our foreman Dave were outstanding. Dave and the entire crew worked for over 3 weeks and did a beautiful job. We could not be happier with the quality of work, the attention to detail, and the willingness to be certain we got the deck we really wanted. Once the work began, which was within a week of final agreement as to design and materials, the crew worked 5 days a week until the job was completed. Total time was 3 weeks from beginning of construction to completion. The deck is solid and built to last. Heavy posts, beams and joists with footings to match make our deck better that I could have imagined. We would, without hesitation or reservation, highly recommend 3 Rivers Decks to anyone who wants a quality job done and value for their money.

They have an excellent response time. They are patient, efficient, and professional. They are also trustworthy and their design is exactly what I had in mind. I will highly recommend them.

Three Rivers provide us with a very attractive and reasonable proposal. It included enough product and structural descriptions to compare. We contacted them to let them know we wanted them do to the work and would like to take them up on their offer to see product samples. We're disappointed that we haven't heard from them since.

My concern going in was if Three Rivers could tear out the existing and install the new deck without damaging the adjacent finishes. The owner assured me that his guys were good at this. This ended up not being the case. When the project was done the deck was actually smaller than the one that it replaced which left an ugly gap. When I asked them to address this, a company foreman(?) did not have an idea of what to do. I finally asked him to provide me a piece of lumber and told him I would take care of it. Which he did. The other problems consisted of quality of work; debris left strewn around, nail heads sticking out of siding and trim boards, and pulling off existing materials to build the deck, but putting back on different ones that were inconsistent with the rest of my house. To top it off, every wall adjacent to the deck was covered with dirty hand prints and other dirt scuffs. To make matters worse they tried to pressure wash these marks off my house and in the process they blew a bunch of paint off the adjacent trim boards. This will force me to have this whole area repainted.

The bid was very professional and priced out all the options. It included an excellent diagram of how the deck would look which came in handy later to enable the crew to make correct decisions during construction. The crew was very professioinal and easy to work with. Dave, the crew leader, was creative insolving any problem areas and ensuring a high standard of quality. We are extremely pleased with our new deck and highly recommend Three Rivers. -Bob & Micki Anderson

Three Rivers designed and installed an attractive Timber Tech deck at the rear of our home. Jim Gates was very responsive to our design plans and request for changes. The crew team lead, Pancho, was fabulous. He and his construction team were very hard working, polite, and worked non-stop in horrible weather to complete our project in an amazingly short amount of time. We are very happy with the quality and craftsmanship of our new deck. We would recommend anyone wanting to have a new deck to check out Three Rivers Custom Decks. -Layne Lindquist and Michael Rutten

Three Rivers Custom Decks just finished a huge job for us and since I got their name off reviews online, I have been anxious to report. Nutshell: 5 STARS all the way. I am so in love with my beautiful new deck, and my husband is really impressed by how solidly built it is. We got three or four estimates before we began and chose Three Rivers because they did the most to earn our business beforehand AND they were the lowest bid (even though they were planning to do more than their competitors). Jim Gates was easy to work with and had good advice while we were planning. Everything he suggested has turned out to be a great idea. The crew was great, too. It was such a big project that they were around for about a month (snow days didn't help their timeline), and were always respectful and willing to answer question and very quick to resolve concerns. In my experience, Three Rivers is what every organization should be: easy to work with, well-prepared, conscientious about their work, and better than expected. They have impressed some pretty picky people. I confidently recommend Three Rivers.

Three rivers staff discussed all the options including materials for the repair of the deck. They stayed on the job until work was complete, kept the job site spotless, and quickly carried away old materials. I'm extremely satisfied with the result. My deck has been given a whole new lease on life.

Jim Gates of Three Rivers built our original deck and did an excellent job. Unfortunately the product we chose failed miserably and needed to be redone after a short time. To his credit, he worked with us and gave us a fair deal for the replacement. We found his work crew were trustworthy; hard workers; cleaned up daily and were on the job daily until the deck was completed . There was no loud music while they were working. Each one of the the crew were respectful and courteous. Best of all they showed pride in their work and had good reason to do so. They did a terrific job!

Set Appointment for Jim to come out on June 16. Matt showed up on time and friendly. Said he would provide quote by June 24th. I called and left a message Saturday June 25th that I hadn't received my quote. June 26th I sent email again. Monday June 27th left another message. Received a call back from Blanca about 4pm June 27th that she had received my messages and email but the owner Jim was on vacation until Thursday the 30th and the quote hadn't been finished (remember Matt had come to my house). Friday 2pm July 1st I called and spoke to Blanca that I hadn't heard anything. 2:10pm Blanca called back that the owner Jim should be contacting me soon. I then receive an email from the Owner Jim stating he had been trying to call me all day but saying my phone wasn't accepting messages.....I had used my phone all day and his employee Blanca had even reached me. When I replied back to his email on July 1st he has yet to respond via email or phone and it is July 6th 2pm. I'm not to impressed with the level of service Three Rivers has provided. Matt said he'd provide a quote with various options. He did not bring any samples to show me only left me with a catalog to choose from....Which I think is strange since it's not my job to translate what is best for me and the deck. Pictures are only that. No real discussion occurred for which is best for my house or environment around me. It would have been nice to touch and visually see the product I was about to spend $20k-$40k+++ on (only a guess since I never received a quote). Two other vendors came the same day and had samples and pictures of projects they had completed and they already provided a quote. I had hoped for Three Rivers to provide better service since they typically got good reviews but for some reason they are not interested in my business. A customer should not have to track down a company to provide them business.

I had a commitment to get a proposal to me in 2 days. It's now been almost 3 weeks of asking for a proposal, I still haven't received anything from them.

Jim Gates was great. We wanted to go with permits, and they were more than fine with that. Jim met me after work, which is late, but he had no problems with that. He took measurements and drew up the plans. Once the permits were issued they got right to work. The whole project was done in less than two weeks. His employees were professional and worked a few long days to catch up from waiting on the inspector. I am so happy with our new timber tech deck. It is so beautiful.

Our experience with owner, Jim Gates and his crew of William and Nick was excellent. William had good ideas of small changes and improvements as the job progressed. We appreciated his suggestions. William and Nick both did top quality work. They were a pleasure to have working on our home. Despite days of heavy rain and record setting heat they got the job finished in a timely manner. We feel very comfortable recommending them.

This is an excellent company to work with. Jim Gates, owner, returned calls promptly, was very thorough in explaining the process. The project was done by Ryan and Zack. These two are exceptional workers and an asset to Jim's company. I would gladly hire this company again.

Jim was very professional from the outset. We contacted him in December 2015, and he was able to lock in 2015 material prices, saving us a bit of money. He gave us a fair and reasonable bid, and stuck to it. Once the work started, there were minimal delays, in spite of one of his crew being ill; the work was completed in a timely manner. Our deck is fairly large, approx 10 x 30 ft, and 3rd story, so a little more complicated. The first contractor I tried took one look and told us it was too high. It also has a smaller upper level, which Jim helped us redesign, so that we have much more usable deck space. We also have a lower deck for which we kept the cedar planking un-changed, but just replaced the railings. Because of keeping the original planking, they could not replace some of the support structure as planned, due to some sagging, and so offered to replace the worn 4 step staircase to the ground, which worked out well, for the same cost. We chose a metal/black wire railing to go with the trex decking. It all came out quite well; we couldn't be happier

We had the materials and design for the new deck in mind when we obtained three bids on the project. All came in within $100 of each other which was a first. We appreciated the time Jim spent discussing the project with us and, when he said he could easily fit us in between larger jobs, his company seemed like the obvious choice. And he did fit us in within just a week and a half of giving us his bid. Ryan and Zach made up the crew and worked hard for 10 days in all kinds of weather from pouring rain to 90 degree heat. They were a pleasure to have around and didn't mind our (well, my) daily questions about the details of the project. Ryan did a beautiful job on the wrap-around stairs and the square trellis skirting which required quite a bit of detail work. We initially had some concerns about the aesthetics of a composite deck, but now feel like we have the best of both worlds, an easy-to-maintain and really attractive deck.

Jim Gates, owner, provided an estimate in June of 2014, but we decided not to proceed with the project at that time. In February I got estimates from 3 other companies. Of those two were significantly higher than the one from Three Rivers and one was substantially lower. When I re-contacted Jim, I wasn't sure if he'd honor an estimate that was more than 6 months old, but he did so with no hesitation (and later lowered the total because of an Angie's List coupon). I exchanged several emails with Jim, asking questions and nailing down details. He was always very responsive through this process, answering my questions promptly and fully. When we were comfortable that we wanted to proceed, I asked Jim to draw up a contract with the details we'd agreed on - and I didn't hear anything more from him for 5 days. He had gotten very busy (including preparing for the spring Home show), but it felt strange that he dropped our of communication at the moment we indicated we wanted him to do the job. It ended up being 3 weeks from the time we asked for a contract until we got it - and then the contract turned out to be nothing more than the original estimate with only a very minor tweak. I had been hoping to have a few more details in writing before work started, but decided that we had enough of the details covered in emails that it would not be a problem. In the mean time, Jim had scheduled the job to start on March 14. We expected the crew to start around noon, but it turned out to be pretty late in the afternoon before Ryan, the crew leader, showed up. Ryan was easy to work with and meticulous about cleaning up the work area at the end of each day. It was clear he knew his job well, and the quality of the work was everything we could ask for. The job took 6 days, and during that period we always felt that we knew what to expect (with deliveries of materials, worker's schedules, cleanup, etc.). Once the work was done, we went back into another bit of a communication lag with Jim. Near the end of the work we had agreed to have them level one of our staircases, which was leaning a bit, so Jim needed to determine the exact cost of that and provide us a new balance due. We didn't get that (via email) until more than 2 weeks after the work was completed. Not a problem for us, but it seemed strange. Jim wanted to send someone to our house to pick up the check rather than have us mail it, and that didn't happen for another 5 days. Again, I'm always happy to hold on to my money for as long as I can, but it did seem odd. Overall, I was very happy with the work and I felt the price was very fair. I would certainly have them do another job for us.

Our experience with Three Rivers was excellent. Jim was very responsive throughout the entire course of the project. If I called or emailed, I received a response the same day. He was patient and thorough answering any questions I had. Jim also coordinated with the sport court company to make sure the deck was built according to the specifications required for the court. The crew that came out and did the work was hard working, polite, and did a high quality job. Jim and the crew went above and beyond and we are very happy with the end product!