Recent Review: One major problem I had was the result of a mistake by the subs, the subcontractor that was doing the wall and concrete work. After the deck was finished they were digging out for a retaining wall below the deck and bumped the deck with their digger. Before the work was started, I questioned the decision to do the deck before the retaining wall, but John felt that it wouldn't be a problem. I think the decision to do the deck first was based on scheduling rather than what was the best order to do things in. Fortunately, it was only one board on the collar beam that was damaged, and there was no major structural damage to the deck. John said he would be out as soon as the concrete work was finished to replace the board. The deal was that I would pay my final payment of $5850 after all of the work (deck, concrete, and walls) was completed. John wanted me to give him the payment before the deck was repaired, and I argued that the job was not considered complete until the deck was fixed. He was upset that I was withholding $5850, but I was just staying true to the contract, which stated that $5850 was due when the work was complete, which in my opinion it was not. I compromised and gave him $5000 and withheld $850 until the deck was repaired the following week. For more information about the deck damage, including a picture, please see my review of the subcontractors. Another problem was that the nails immediately rusted out on the first 4 rows of deck boards. It turned out that their nail gun was not loaded with galvanized nails when they started. So, several boards needed to be replaced. Those boards needed to be removed to fix the damage to the collar beam anyway, so all of those repairs were done at the same time. There were also a ton of places where they did not nail the deck boards to the joists. I would say they missed about 5% of them. They also fixed this when they came to repair the other problems. There is one board in particular on the deck that is extremetly warped. I would have thrown it out. I mentioned it, but I didn't really press the issue because I didn't feel it was worth arguing about. Another disappointment was that when he initially quoted me the $8000 I thought it included the small section of fence below the deck. Then I asked him before he started and he said he forgot about it, but would "work with me" on the price. I kept asking how much he thought it would be, but he never really gave me an answer, and then at the end he said it would be $800, which I thought was a bit much. But I consider that to be my own fault for not putting more pressure on him for a price before I let him do it. To make matters worse, I re-did all of the pickets anyway. Since the patio was done after the fence, the pickets did not come down to the patio, defeating the purpose of having the yard enclosed. I would have given a B on quality, but they did fix the things that I really complained about.