C3 Backyard Oasis LLC

Contracted early in June with Cory Chambers to build a patio cover and pergola. Upon a deposit of $6000 Cory said he would begin the project in a week. He resisted a request to get a city building permit. After three weeks we checked with the city and found out that there was no permit request. In the one and only phone call Cory returned to us during these 10 weeks, Cory said he would submit a permit Request. To this day, we just found out, according to the city of Keller Texas, the permit was denied because of incomplete information supplied by Cory to the city. After weeks of unreturned phone calls and canceled meetings, we requested that Cory return our money. He contacted us by email and told us the check was in the mail but we have never received our deposit of approximately $6000. Cory has never responded to our messages regarding the return of our deposit.

Overall, I am very happy with the work that was done. I was looking for a patio cover, complete with cedar posts, and tied into my existing roof. Alfonso and his team did a great job. They were friendly, knowledgeable, punctual, and followed up with me when necessary. The finished product was exactly what I asked for, and they cleaned up after they were done, which was very important to me. I have already referred them to a couple of colleagues who are looking for similar projects. Thanks Corey and Alfonso!

Initially things went well with the project of pouring a stamped and stained concrete patio, stone work, and cedar covered patio.  However, when the project got the phase where the concrete was to be stained and sealed, this is where everything started to fall apart. The contract states the project date was to be completed no later than Nov 18th, 2011.  It is now Jan 22, 2012 and I continue to have issues with C3 Backyard Oasis and the quality of work that they have performed.

The person who did the staining and sealing of the concrete didn't know what he was doing.  He made a very big mess of some expensive concrete: approx 700 sq ft of concrete.  The staining of the concrete looked to be hastily done and it looked more like water colors had been applied to the concrete, not stain.  The colors were not the colors I had agreed upon, and looked blotchy, not uniform, and more cartoon like then natural stone colors.

The concrete was poured with a footer for a hot tub, and the owner and foreman of C3 Backyard Oasis were well informed that a hot tub would be going in that area.  As a result, I stated several times, and even on the day of the concrete pouring the 96"x"96" area of concrete where the footer is should be poured level -- perfectly flat.  From side to side the hot tub has 4" of drop and as a result, it is hard to operate the hot tub because the water has to be overfilled in order to cover the jets.

The foreman attempted to make excuse after excuse of why the concrete turned out the way it did and that is the way it should look.  Finally after firmly stating my disapproval, C3 Backyard Oasis had someone try and re-stain the concrete, however, that was not successful.

One of the 8x8 cedar posts needed to be moved because they did not measure appropriately when placing the posts in concrete.  Being it had to be moved, the stone boots didn't cover up the cedar post embedded into the concrete.  The contractor attempted to patch the concrete, but did a very poor job of the patch and made an eye sore.

The stone boots that were placed around the 8x8 cedar posts have cracks in the mortar on each boot.  There are stones that are loose and the caps on top of the stone boots are not cemented in place.

In addition, C3 Backyard Oasis left my yard a mess for more than 6 weeks despite no work being performed and me telling them to clean up their mess.  They attempted to clean up the yard, however, they left sections of my yard full of concrete and rock.  In fact, as of the writing of this report, I still have a big pile of rock next to my fence.

I had written the owner, Corey Chambers, several times over the last couple months, and the last correspondence I received from him was 11/30/2011 in the form of an email.  When a project gets this out of hand, I would expect the owner to be in close communication and not rely on his foreman to communicate with the customer.