Artistic Concrete & Masonry

We had a concrete sidewalk and a 12 X 11 pad poured. The team did a fantastic job and it looks great.

Very very bad. Richard has no integrity or ethics. He did some stamped concrete for me but it didn’t turn out right. He came back and his crew tried to fix it but they didn’t fix it. The concrete doesn’t match after he stained it for the second time. He hasn’t reached out to me after that to make it right. His crew does not mask off bricks next to where they are going to spray sealer. It leaves your bricks with shiny sealant on them too, not just the flooring. He does not supervise his crew at all. He only is there for the start of the job and arrives at the end and wants to be paid. I would not recommend him at all.

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The quality of their work stood out, and they showed up and did it. The interaction was fine. The owner comes out and does it, but he doesn't look like a typical business person, he looks a little shady, but he is a very nice person. The first time he came out, I was a little scared, and we used him, and he was a great fine. He just doesn't look the part, and he is always moving around, but he knows what he is doing, he does professional work, and he didn't take money before doing the work. He is very good at what he does.  Professionally they were great.

When he was selling his product he was prompt. He had plenty of pictures of previous work. He seemed passionate about his work. After he and his crew got started it took a long time to finish. He got started in the spring and finished after Labor day. I never knew when they would be showing up to work. Since we were not in a hurry we did not mind so much. The entrance gate and the sitting wall were beautiful. The concrete work looked pretty. We asked him to put in more walls. We described to him what we wanted and he told us he could do it and that he would be in touch with us. We never heard from him again. Early this year we noticed some of the mortar he put over the concrete is chipping and breaking. We also noticed a big crack in the concrete of one of the patios he put in. I never called him about it.

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In the summer of 2014 we contacted Richard Berdych of Artistic Concrete
regarding replacing some stones around our swimming pool that had begun flaking
quite badly, leaving debris in the pool every time it rained.
 Richard came to our home and looked at the problem. He assured us that his
company saw this issue quite often, and that he had developed a process to deal
with it.
  Richard was very personable, and we had a long,pleasant talk with him. He
showed us examples of  projects his company has completed. As we began to feel
more comfortable with him, we discussed other improvements to our home that he
seemed able and willing to accomplish. One thing led to another and by the time
we parted ways, Richard had bid on aprox. $5000 of work, to include power
washing and sealing the stone in the pool area as well as replacing the
deteriorating stones and mortar, and replacing or repairing the pool area grout,
mortar, waterfall and retaining wall.
 In addition, we were interested in having a  decorative concrete overlay
installed on our front and back porches. This process is known as
stamping.
  We told Richard that we would consider his quote and get back to him. A
few days later I contacted Mr Berdych requesting references. He e-md' a list of
companies and individuals that spoke favorably of his company's work. Not long
after, we scheduled the work, paying a 50% of the total about 30 days out from
the start date of the job.
  A few weeks later, Richard called and said that they were ready to begin.
He arrived one morning and dropped off a rock mason who was to take care of 
repairing and replacing the damaged and deteriorating rock, mortar and grout. In
a short conversation with the mason, I discovered that he is not an employee of
Artistic Concrete, but a sub-contractor.This surprised me since Richard led us
to believe that he had full time employees. At any rate this man, while a nice
enough guy, did a very poor job in his 2 plus days at our home. He totally
trashed our pool and spa twice, causing me to spend 5-6 hrs cleaning up the
large amount of debris that he allowed to fall into the water. He made
absolutely no attempt to keep anything out of the pool. When I called Richard
about the matter he said something about putting on his scuba gear to clean the
pool. I went back to cleaning the mess myself. I also mentioned that some of the
stones that were to be replaced had not been touched. His response was that they
now didn't need replaced and could be sealed instead. I asked the mason about
trying to keep the pool clean and he told me  "the next guys" did clean
up.
  The next step in our project was the concrete stamping. This is where a
thin layer of concrete was poured over our existing porches, and a decorative
design (in our case one that looks like field stone) is "stamped" into the wet
concrete. Again, a crew of sub-contractors arrived, again they made a mess and
did a poor job, and again told us that the "next guys" would make it right. It
was obvious that their goal was to get to the next job as fast as possible. As a
result, the quality of  the work done at our home suffered
  The final step was to color and seal the stamping, and to seal the rest
of the job. I believe this was the first time we actually saw any Artistic
Concrete employees. Unlike the previous workmen, these guys at least showed an
interest in doing a good job and taking a little pride in their work. However,
so much crummy work had been done ahead of them that when they called it a day
and called the job complete there were many issues yet to be resolved.
  The mason had left several areas needing repair untouched, and a lot of
the work he had done made things worse than when he started. For instance, there
was a lot of grout smeared on the tile in the spa, and some of the grout he had
replaced had been finished by swiping his finger thru it. The waterfall repair
was a complete failure and looked worse than when he started. The rocks we
had repeatedly asked to be replaced were still there, flaking badly
  The stamping crew had allowed excess concrete to run over the edges of
the porches and left it to dry in an uneven mess. It looked terrible. We could
see where they had used damaged, worn, stamping tools that pulled up the wet
concrete and exposed the existing porch, making no attempt to do a proper
job.
 I contacted Mr. Berdych and told him that I thought we were a long way
from a finished product. He was very upset, but agreed to send a crew out to
address our concerns. In a few days the same guys that I assume to be Artistic
Concrete employees returned and worked several hours to try to salvage the job
and clean up the mess. They worked hard and things looked a lot better when they
were finished, although they again inexplicably left the deteriorating stones,
opting to apply a large amount of sealer.
  A couple of days later, I paid Richard the balance due. At that time I
requested that a receipt and warranty information be sent to me. After several
days, and several e-mails and calls , Richard e-mailed what could almost pass
for a receipt,and a one sentence explanation of the warranty on the stamping. At
my insistence, he included a statement that the problematic stones that his
crews had refused to replace would be removed and replaced as originally
agreed should they continue to flake into the water. I repeatedly requested
information about the warranty on the rest of the job, and Mr. Berdych simply
ignored me. It seemed to me that once he was paid, he considered the matter
closed. At the time of this review, I have nothing in writing regarding the
warranty on the rock repair and sealing. In addition, as time goes by we have
noticed things that weren't done properly, or not done at all. For instance, the
wall on the end of the pool was repaired but never sealed.
  My advice to anyone considering hiring Artistic Concrete would be to get
the name of the sub contractors Richard plans on using, and get specific
references on them, instead of accepting references of Artistic Concrete as
representative of the quality of work homeowners can expect. I'd recommend
requiring warranty information up front and never paying the total bill until
a full warranty was in hand. I'm doubtful that the warranty will be honored when
problems arise, but at least you'd have something to take to court. If I had it
to do over, we would have had Richard come to our home for a final inspection
that included going over the estimate line by line so unfinished items wouldn't
slip thru the cracks
  I would generously rate our overall experience with Artistic Concrete as
a C minus.  If our experience is typical, Richard Berdych is a great salesman,
but in my opinion, a poor business operator. Once the money was in the bank, we
were on our own. All in all a disappointing
experience.
UPDATE  3/30/2015...........................
     The sealing work done on the stone surrounding our pool began to fail almost immediately, and on October 18, 2015 I contacted Artistic Concrete and asked wha

Artistic Concrete & Masonry with Richard Berdych as manager has proven to be an exceptional contractor. In October 2012, Artistic Concrete & Masonry was contracted by the Winchester Hills Home Owners Association for three repair projects. One was the resetting of a wrought iron perimeter fence located in a flood-prone area. This required straightening of the fence and pouring a completely new concrete footing. A second project was the repair and beautifying of the openings for the gate control arms of the entrance gate house. The third project consisted of various repairs to the perimeter brick wall  to include resetting brick and repairing mortar joints. This entailed 18 separate areas of repair. Since the brick wall is approximately 30 years old, matching the repair work to the existing structure was considered of utmost importance. For all three projects, Artistic Concrete & Masonry did a first-rate job. The concrete work was done in such a way that it is not expected any future problems will occur in the event of heavy rains. The brick work and mortar repairs were very well done and the color match proved better than had been expected considering the age of the original brick work. During the repair work, any concerns that were had by the Winchester Hills HOA were quickly resolved to our satisfaction. Even though the Winchester Hills HOA had to wait approximately 3 weeks before work could be started (Artistic Concrete & Masonry is a busy company and the Winchester Hills HOA was in no particular hurry), once work got started, everything was finished within 3 days. Not only was the work done to our satisfaction, but Artistic Concrete & Masonry was the lowest bidder! We highly recommend them to others and they will be our first choice for any future concrete or masonry needs.