Had a patio, walkway and driveway curbs put in by PC this year, needless to say, it was a huge job, and we did our due diligence before deciding , and received quotes from a number of companies, and yes, we could have had it done for less, but after speaking with a couple of companies, apparent that having something like this done truly is a you get what you pay for situation - we wouldn't have a 5 year warranty, (we could have gotten a 90 day warranty, or we could have paid a huge price for an extended warranty) some companies weren't planning on even doing a compacted base (let alone rebar - and said it would take them 3 days start to finish), others were just going to use fiber reinforced concrete because (in the words of one of the companies) "it's just a patio, it’s not like you are going to park a car on it". When we met with PC for the initial quote, we were given a book of historical jobs that they have done with the insistence that before we sign anything, we should take a week and drive around to check out the jobs that had been done in the past to be able to see how they have held up and weathered the years.
Everyone that I dealt with at PC Mississauga was great, From Servio, Josef and Susy at the office and especially Vlad who did a superhuman job - completing a huge amount of framing in a very short time and bringing the smallest of details to my attention, and the not-so-small army of guys (I think that it was about 20 of them) that started assembling on the lawn before 7:00 on a Saturday morning to do the pouring, patterning and colouring (and had to put up with a peanut gallery of gawkers watching them all work their butts off through the day). All the way through to the guys that came to do the aftercare; the cutting, polishing, power washing and the sealing (unfortunately I didn't get all of their names)
For choosing the colours and the patterns, it was refreshing to be able to look at a sizable real life 3 dimensional piece of finished concrete outside at the head office - as opposed to try to visualize how a 2 dimensional picture out of a catalogue or a small chip would look in the real world.
Post care and cleanup was also more than we expected, after they cut, and polished the whole thing (including hand polishing the edges), they spent several hours pressure washing absolutely everything, not just the patio and walkway, but also the sides of the house, the driveway and all of the windows (which was pretty much expected), but also the lawn and the road, even so far as to pressure wash the inside of the air conditioner and the trees on the front yard.
All in total, we had about 1000 square feet poured, and this has not only increased the curb appeal of the house immensely, but most importantly it’s made our backyard much more enjoyable, usable and inviting. We’ve gotten more use out of our backyard in the few months since this has been done than we have in the full 2 preceding years and will also make it more useable year round, winter barbeques are going to be so much easier (even though it’s potentially more that I will need to shovel when it snows).
We've received literally dozens of compliments on the work, one of my neighbours mentioned that people have actually stopped their cars and gotten out to take pictures of the walkway and the entrance to the house. Will have to see how it winters, but they've done a fair amount of work in our neighbourhood - many of those were done before we moved in (some of those I haven't seen the homeowners do any maintenance on in the 5 or so years that I've lived there) but they still look like they were done recently. So I really don’t have any concerns there.
