I went digging through the archives and found this message to Zach and John from August 15, 2016. Here we were many months over our “8-10 week” estimate and they were already blowing me off and ignoring me. Let’s step through my message with some inline explanations. Also, some items have been redacted to protect the innocent. While Landfare was a mess, some of their subs were good.
Zach and Jon (sic),
I’m back in town. I am going to start to add initial request dates to some of these to show length of time outstanding.
I added the date of original ask as they weren’t being responsive. In many cases it had been over 6 weeks since I had made the initial request. Note the number of July 4 and July 19 requests with no response.
Honestly, I am getting quite concerned. This seems like behavior I have experienced in the past that makes me very nervous: the last 10% of the work drags on forever or is never completed properly or I have to put a lot of effort into follow up to get it done. Or worse, things are done in a way that perhaps it is hoped I don’t notice that it was done half way. I certainly hope that is not the case and this is a staffing/training issue, but the fact things have slowed to a crawl and I seem to need to repeat the same concerns over and over (> 6 weeks in some cases) are not making me feel comfortable. Also, as I lose trust, I tend to scrutinize things much more closely as I need to verify everything which is not a good use of my time and will drive you nuts. I hope you appreciate frank, but I am feeling very uneasy at the moment. What can we do to get this initial project completed (“done done” as we call it at the office) in short order so we can move on to the other things we would like to work on?
You can’t say I wasn’t clear with my expectation.
* Owed electrical quote. (P Diddy out 2 weeks ago)
* Rain sensor install. – On fence. To move to garage west side fascia.
* Receptacle install on garage for pool cover pump. – P Diddy quote to come.
* Break out drive way and painting quotes. – Done. Painting quote signed and returned.
* Scheduling to come. Drive way plans to come?
* Zach to provide paint details… what paint/stain/primer used, number of coats, application technique, how surfaces prepped, etc.
* Lighting quotes – waiting on GESmith and P Diddy (Been over a month, 6 weeks on GESmith? Are they interested in the job at all?)
* Gutter cleaning – Zach scheduled
* Blu pool service quote – Zach gave me paper work last week.
*I also mentioned a long while back fixing the down light on the NW front of the house. – P Diddy quote to come
P Diddy is Landfare’s electrical sub of choice. That is just my protecting the innocent with a goofy placeholder name. Dude is totally solid and I would and have used him since.
The rain sensor… they just installed it and under a roof edge so it wouldn’t get any rain.
I finally canceled the painting work.
P Diddy and GESmith… I have since worked with GESmith (another pseudonym) and they are doing significant work on my home renovation job. Guess what GESmith has never had a problem with? Getting me quotes and communication back in a timely manner. I can only imagine Landfare was sitting on the quotes, not following up, busy with something else… who knows?
The downlight… Landfare said they would fix it. Then they said they didn’t have a tall enough ladder. Then I never heard about it again. At least I didn’t waste any money on that fix.
* Clean out the masonry crud between the fence and east side fence. (July 4) – Looks like rather than cleaned out it was covered over? Can we clean this out properly, please? I could do it in 10 minutes with a ShopVac.
* Popped bricks (July 19) – several around the edges. Don’t know how we can proceed with sand if the bricks are not yet solid? This seems like grouting loose tile.
* Add a leg off of irrigation to the space on the SE corner of the upper patio to reach some of those plants. Unless it is a foot deep, it doesn’t exist. (July 19)
* Clean up mortar joints in limestone/brick (especially planter face and cheek wall) and once over those joints already starting to crack. (July 19)
* Railing on east side – In process.
* Back Gate clean up. Gate does not open/close well now.
(July 31) The board (center stile) still needs to be replaced where they hole sawed the entire way through. The front gate has the same issue. They need to have stile replaced and re-drilled with a proper 2 1/8″ hole.
Also noticed the gates are seemingly braced backwards. Braces should start at the upper corner away from the hinge and then end at the bottom corner by the hinge pushing the weight of the opposite corner into the hinge…. I am guessing this is why we have seen so much sag. What can we do here?
* Level pavers on NW corner of house by the irrigation controller. (July 4)
* Triple check and relay all pavers. Spidey senses are not good in a lot of places and a 4 foot level tells me I am not imagining it.
* Fill in mortar in SE side of patio joints. (July 4) – See above. Done, but poorly. Needs to be redone and properly tooled.
* Irrigation map. (July 4)
* Clean up gravel where the new pool plumbing went in. – Mostly done.
* Cover/trench irrigation where it has surfaced. – I understand no trench, but still need mulch to cover in places.
* Replace plants and remove masonry crud between upper patio (SE corner) and fence. – Plants not in the ground?
* The brick and sand still needs a lot of work and I am not seeing any real progress. If anything, it seems to be degrading.What is the specific plan around this and how each item will be addressed?
Thanks,
BubbaDuck
I had to endlessly chase Landfare on these sorts of things. I’ll post a few more of them in time. As I am digging through my old emails, I sent A LOT of message like this. Also, there are things I am reading above that never happened. Properly counter bored 2 1/8″ holes in my gates? Never happened. You can push the locks right through the gate to this day. I literally rebuilt an entire gate myself with new wood as Landfare couldn’t comprehend the concept of a counterbored hole. The other gate I’ll get to in the spring when I have time. Oh, and I directly told Zach that I rebuilt the gate myself. No apologies. No concerns. I got maybe half of a shrug.
Also, this was a doozy, their guys would literally not put plants in the ground. They would lay the plants out and then subsequently leave never putting them in the actual ground. Incredible.
I have no idea what Landfare was doing with my money and general contractor mark up, but they certainly weren’t spending it or their time on proactive quality or managing my project. They should have been paying me to manage them.