Black Hills Stone Mansonry

     He shows up promplty with a clean appearance and positive attitude.  Gives a proposal and performs work as specified on time and on budget.

  The contractor was initially very good to work with, I had used him before for two previous projects on the interior of the house and was happy with the work.  For the the project in question he was given a hand sketched structural drawing of the desired work.  He did not supply an initial cost and but it came in much higher than anticipated.  He charged $2200.00 to install 4 Concrete Mansonry (CMU) pillars fully grouted with rebar and 4 Anchor bolts for the future base plate and column above.  This work was completed in November 2010.  We were not there to observe the work being completed but paid him immediately after the work was finished as he stated the work was done exactly according to the structural drawing.  At the time of completion he was aware that we planned to hire him to complete rock facing of the project after the columns and finished structure had been installed.  Because we live out of state we were unable to see the origninal CMU work until a site visit in May 2011.  At the time of the site visit we noticed that the anchor bolts were crooked and did not stick out enough for proper base plate installation.  We called him to make him aware of the issue even though we had already paid.  The steel contractor had to make some modifications to the base plates to accomodate the irregular anchor bolt configuration.  When we spoke with him in May, and made notice of the issues we told him that the structure was being installed and we would need the rock work completed.  At that time he said he would give a final bid for the work.  We asked him on multiple occasions to give a bid on the rock work with no response.  In the meantime we had put the house on the market and got an offer.  We made multiple attempts to contact him with no response as it was urgent that we get the work done.  He avoided calls by myself and fiance.  He finally answered his phone after my real estate agent called him.  He was scheduled to complete the work the final week of June.    He bided out the final rock work at $2500.00. The final structure was installed the last week of June 2011 as planned.   He arrived on site the 28th of June and called me saying that the work was more than he anticipated and would charge me $3300.00 instead of the $2500.00 he stated earlier, because it would take 3 days and he would have to pull guys from other job sites.  After a few minutes of negotiating he became beligerant and was cussing at me over the phone.  He threatened to walk off the job if I did not pay him the full amount demanded.  He knew that I was scheduled to sell the house in a week and took advantage of the situation to increase his profit.  In the end the work took him less than 2 days but still charged the extra money.  Buyer beware of this mason.  He can be good if kept to a written bid and supervised, bad if you are not at the site and are in need of a trustworthy individual.