Back in January 2010 I was contacted by a customer about doing a full remodel on a pool deck.  It was a large job, almost 1300 square feet.  I priced out replacing the whole surface with our spray texture product and as with all of our projects gave a written warranty with the proposal that would cover any defective materials or workmanship (bond failure).   After leaving a couple of voicemails to follow up with no response I filed the proposal away.

Last week I received a phone call about pool deck work in that area and when I showed up to look at the job I recognized both the house and the pool deck.  The homeowner didn’t remember me at all and started showing me problems throughout the deck area.  Most of these problems were related to bond failure where the new surface was literally just flaking off.  There were two other areas that held a lot of water causing slipping issues that should have been addressed.  She let me know that a complete remodel was done in February of 2010 and that she had another contractor repaint the surface about a year ago to try to “save” the surface.  I wrote up a quote for removing and replacing the entire surface so that she wouldn’t have to be bothered with anymore deck work for another 10 years.  The quote that I gave her last week was $5700.00.  When I got back to the office I couldn’t wait to start looking for the original proposal that I gave on that job.  The original proposal was for $4200.00.  My pricing hasn’t gone up in the last two years, the difference is simply the cost of removing all of the work that was poorly done so we can start fresh with a solid surface.

This is a sad situation.  She probably “saved” $1000.00 on the original job by going with a small timer with no licensing, warranty, or plans to be around long term.  Then a year later spent that $1000.00 to try to cover up a job poorly done.  Now before year three rolls around I quote her almost $6k to clean up everybody’s mess and to finally do the job right so that the pool deck isn’t a constant eyesore.  A couple bad hiring decisions turned a $4200.00 problem into a $10,000.00 problem and a lot of headaches along the way.  I’m not sure if I’ll get the job this time around because there’s always that cheaper guy out there, and some people just never learn.  If you want your job done right and want a company that will stand behind their work, give us a call at 407-342-8552.  Click here to go to our pool deck gallery