Brain Lark looked legitimate when he showed up to check out the work to be done. I was hiring him to pour concrete steps and a walkway for the front of my house. He handed me a buisness card attached to a print out of his liability insurance. Acted as though he could perform the work that had to be done. I went through the job and told him exactly what had to be done while he took notes on it all. I showed up at around 2 pm the first day he was on the job and nothing was done how I told him. He had improper bracing on concrete forms, the bottom step was halfway in the ground, the framework was inset on the house 2" on either side of the house I asked for it to be flush with the house. The bottom walkway was 6" out of line with the steps. There was item after item after item wrong. I had three other professional concrete contractors come out and look over the job and they were amazed at how poorly everything was built and told me flat out this is going to be a disaster. I already paid Brian $700 and decided to cut my losses and get a new contractor. I told him he was finished and would not be completing the project. He threatened to sue me and my Dad if he was going to finish the job. My dad was worried about legal problems with Brian and did'nt know just how much was going wrong so he told Brian if he fixed all of the things that the contractors had pointed out then he would work with him on the situation. Brian said he would only do the work if I was not present on the job site (so I would'nt be able to verify if the work was properly redone). The cement truck showed up for pouring the concrete steps and nothing was braced properly, the concrete was not vibrated, the concrete was put in the form so slowly the concrete was hardening before it was in place. He finished filling the form and his "concrete finisher" worked the surface, spraying the surface constantly to make the concrete workable (weakening the concrete). They finished and said the exact opposite of what the professional concrete contractors told us "wait a few days before pulling off the forms" because they knew it would turn out horrible. We pulled the boards off the next day to reveal the steps were wavy up and down by over 1" difference, there were large voids where concrete was missing on the surface (from improper compaction due to not vibrating the concrete), the sides of the steps bowed out from the walls of the house over an inch and bowed and warped every which way from improper bracing and poor construction, the surface of the steps sank backwards where water collected from rain and would form puddles. It goes on and on and on the problems. I had to get a 75 pound jack hammer and demo out the entire structure (which I already did once before to prep the site for the work) and haul away 2 1/2 yards of concrete probably over 6000 pounds and 20 hours worth of work. Before I demo'd out the steps we met with Brian (my Dad and I and a reputable concrete contractor) and explained the situation, we came to the agreement that Brian would come out the following Monday and tear out the old steps and pay for the now $1300 worth of loss ($700 all the materials). Which seemed reasonable considering he threatened my Dad if we did'nt let him finish the job (to which he was'nt even close to being qualified to do). Sunday night the night before Brian was supposed to take demo out his work, he calls my Dad and tells him he's not going to take out the steps and if we wanted our money then he would have to sue us. I tried calling him to talk about the situation but threatened to call the police for harrassment after I only tried calling him two times. Dont ever deal with this guy he will take your money and run and leave you with a job you have to redo completely. I repeat do not trust this guy you will regret it. He is a fly-by-night contractor do not let him do any work of any type. Do not trust him.
I wish I could post pictures to show just how bad the work was.
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