Adam's Concrete & Custom Structures LLC

okay, this is a long one, but if you are considering hiring adam’s concrete for a job, you might want to continue reading. adam’s concrete & custom structures was contracted to remove a chain link fence we had, pour a 12’ x 18’ slab connected to a pool deck & build and stain a 6’ cedar privacy fence with 13 gauge steel posts 3ft in the ground, a walk-through gate & a double drive gate. he has good reviews across numerous sites & was referred on nextdoor by a few of my neighbors. unfortunately, i did not have the same quality results. the slab was the best work done. having said that, it has large trowel indentations & pools water in 2 separate low spots. it should be fine for our purposes, though. moving on to the fence. the fence looked great at first, it wasn’t until i more closely inspected the build that i began to see where corners had been cut. they set the posts the first day & had 7ft sticking out of the ground. it seemed silly to me to buy more post than you need, but they would later cut about a foot off of the top with a sawzall and place a cap over the top. all of the posts are different heights because of this. instead of using actual corner braces, he used 2 line post straps coming from either side & bent to fit. (later telling me that everyone does that.) the gate hinge post straps are undersized for the posts. rather than get the right size, they used them anyway & bent the carriage bolts in the process. the steel frames for the gates appear to have weak bubblegum welds with improper penetration. on the double gate, i’m guessing they drilled a hole in the concrete for a cane bolt before realizing one gate would not open 90 degrees. this left almost no room for adjustment without drilling a new hole in the concrete, and bottlenecked the driveway clearance to about 9ft on a 12ft driveway. they left it that way before i realized these issues. the fence was finished & paid for, but they still had to come back that next weekend to stain it. after they left, i discovered the gate issue & i seemed to find new evidence of poor workmanship each time i walked the perimeter (10ft section of pickets actually digging into the ground, latch screws broken, picket added as a shim to make the latch line up, screw points protruding from gate rails, etc...) unimpressed by their efforts & fearing a continuation of such, i decided i would make necessary repairs & adjustments myself. i just wanted them to stain the fence & be gone. they came to stain the fence & i was told previously that he would be doing 2 coats on either side. after doing one coat on each side, he said he was done. i told him there wasn’t enough stain on it. he began spraying again and quickly ran out of stain, saying that it would cost me $125 per bucket to do more. (later, the stain company rep said that was disappointing, because they instruct customers on proper application and sell the buckets for $85, not including the discount they give adam.) i told him to forget about it & that i would do it myself. i was left with splotchy and completely uneven coloring on every section of the fence. they left & i found more about the workmanship that i didn’t like. i saw that they had sawed off the metal posts from our old fence & attempted to smash them down with a sledge hammer without digging below the ground level, leaving jagged stumps protruding in the yard that my son plays in. (the contract stated tear down the fence, so that is really just a poor job of it, in my opinion.) then i noticed the rails of the fence took the stain differently than the rest. that’s when i realized they had used pressure treated pine instead of cedar for the rails on the entire fence. cedar is a very stable & long lasting wood, which is why i paid more to have it. pressure treated pine, wet from the chemical treatment, is prone to warping & splitting as it dries. while pulling the tag from an end of one of the rails, i noticed a tag on 3 of the steel posts with a model # that said they were actually 9ft-13 gauge posts on the retailers website. meaning they were only 2ft in the ground. i took a post cap off & measured inside the post to the bottom. across multiple posts that i measured, i got around 7’6” on each. unless there is 1-1/2ft of concrete inside the post, they are only 2ft in the ground. short of digging up the post, i have no way of definitively proving this, however. that is not what i wanted and not what was in the contract. i told adam he had scammed me & breached the contract by using pine for what is essentially the skeleton of the fence & only putting the posts 2ft in the ground, as well as sent him a picture of the horrible stain job. i told him i was going to make sure to leave an honest review of the work he had done. he then called me & offered to fix it,(rebuild the entire fence, essentially) but out of fear of continued workmanship issues & re-use of materials, i no longer wanted him to work on my fence. he then, initially offered to refund the cost of the fence, less the material cost. i agreed & he said he would draw up some legal documents & calculate the refund. he called back & had changed his tune. he put me on the phone with prodesk at the lumber section of the store he purchased the materials from, in order to have an employee tell me that lots of contractors use pine rails on a cedar fence. (the contract was for a cedar fence with 13 gauge steel posts 3ft deep .) also, to confirm that he had sold adam 10ft posts. adam repeatedly insisted the posts were 3ft deep. adam then proceeded to go to the business where he rented the auger to have an employee there confirm that he had rented an auger with a depth of 3ft. adam, telling me that this was proof he hadn’t breached all of the contract, decided to offer to refund the difference of pt pine vs. cedar rails (an estimated $150 or 1/5 of the cost of new rails) & give me 2 buckets of stain. i initially refused, but then i decided i should at least get the stain i had already paid for. upon agreement however, he demanded my wife & i sign an non-disclosure agreement stating that we would not leave any negative reviews of his company, before he would do anything.(likely not the first he has issued, as he told me his fiancée works for an attorney.) i refused & decided to warn others, instead. there are actually more issues, but believe it or not, i shortened this review. adam was polite & punctual up until i had problems with the build, then he insisted that i was the liar & scam artist for wanting a partial refund for the shoddy work & refusing to let him repair fence that was less than a week old. i told him i was satisfied with the work initially, but when i looked more closely, i realized the craftsmanship was not there. the fence looks good from a distance or will once it is properly stained, but the corners cut in the construction of it leaves the longevity in question. to be fair, the hardware for the fence build was never discussed, nor stated in the contract. so it is simply my opinion that the choices made & application were of poor quality. i am not a fencing expert. however, as a machinist, i am acutely aware of the importance of using the right tool for the job. a new fence shouldn’t be in need of immediate repair. a homeowner should be able to trust that who they are hiring has some expertise in the field. don’t make the same mistake i did. take time off of work to be present while the installation is being done & withhold the final payment until you have taken the time to perform a thorough inspection.