This is an update to my original review. The job has been completed in 25 days, the work looks ok, except for the crack in the middle of driveway, different tints on two sides of the crack, white blemishes from sealer applied to wet surface and my house being covered in cement.
Payment vs completing the job: they demanded 50% before work started at $14/sq.ft for 650 sq.ft area and another 50% the day before pouring cement.
When I originally asked for an estimate, he said it would take 2 days, 3 days tops, weather permitting. Surprises started from day one when they worked only for 3 hours and were gone for the rest of the day and well as for the next 4 days. When I asked about originally promised 3 days and good weather being royally wasted, he said they usually do it in period of 10 days. Later, when 10 days passed as well, I was told that it usually takes at least a month to complete the job. When 3 weeks passed, he said that some of his customers wait for 6 months. I would prefer is someone could be frank with me from the get go.
Jus to complete the story, after demolishing and removing my old driveway, they disappeared for 4 days, 3 of which were absolutely beautiful dry and sunny September days that are not too hot or cold, just perfect for any outdoor job. Finally perfect weather came to an end with a pouring rain which lasted all day long. The very next morning, at the first sun break in the sky they came and immediately started pouring concrete, when the ground was still soaking wet and soft (too soft to pour concrete in my opinion). They did not prepare the underlayment either - did not set or compress or lever the crushed stone bed, did not put rebars or any other metal reinforcement. When pouring concrete they splashed the house with dirt, even windows on the main floor got dirty, not to mention main entrance fibreglass door with a big side glass lite all covered in concrete too.
Once they poured the concrete, they disappeared again so I was left with a thick layer of a releaser dust with no way for me and my kids to enter the house without getting all dirty. They came 3 days later to wash the dust away. They also removed the wood forms and ... put them on my front yard, where it remained for more than two weeks; leaving yellowed-dead grass underneath after it was finally removed.
The finished driveway now has two colors: second truck came with a different color tint and the division between two colors happen to be in the most visible area - right in the middle of the driveway. A week after concrete was poured the entire driveway slab cracked in half, top to bottom - right between two mixers. Anyone if this business knows that the concrete had to be cut the very next day after it was poured specifically to prevent it from cracking early into the curing.
The concrete was eventually cut, ten days after it was poured, by a hand held gas saw, making long lines not very straight, but that is ok. What is not ok is that they covered my daughter’s stroller with dirt once again, this time with concrete dust. Was it to hard to move the stroller away?
Sealing: 5 gallon sealer pile was there for a week waiting for “a professional” to come who was going to apply it with a pump. They man showed up 3 p.m. in the afternoon but could not power wash it because he lacked the connector to the water hose. So he just washed it from water hose without any pressure, which left most of the dirt where it was. It was getting dark when he started rolling the sealer (no pump); so half of the job was done in complete darkness. Don’t ask me why. Add to this that it was a rainy day with 100% humidity, meaning that the surface was absolutely wet with standing water in some spots.
My take is that most if not all things that went wrong could have been easily prevented, but no one seemed to bother. A word of advice to homeowners: if you think about replacing your driveway, learn from my example and invest into a interlock instead. Even if you are not happy with original work, it is so much easier to fix or change the design of it later. Stamped concrete, in contrast, is close to impossible to fix. The only way to change anything about it is to completely demolish it and do something else from scratch.
