I hired Mr. Florian of Cutting Edge Decks to build a 335.5 square foot pressure treated wood deck between my house and my above ground pool. This included a skirt around the pool with a basic rail.
Approximately 8 to 9 months after the deck was completed little things began to show. IE: the gate was sagging, a deck board was flipping up, the boards of the skirt surrounding the deck were loose and falling off in places, the access door under the deck was falling off and the boards that made up the door were falling apart. It took many calls and a long time before Mr. Florian showed up to my home, and when he did he only shimmed up the gate and fixed one board of the skirt, which I might add fell apart again. I told him I wanted to be there when he came, but he showed up when I was working. (very sneaky) It was a constant game of phone tag with Mr. Florian. He never came back to fix all the problems. Through the years of trying to chase Mr. Florian down my deck began to sag. When contacting Mr. Florian again he became rude, condescending and would not even consider that the sagging of the deck could possibly be something he did wrong. He would not listen to anything constructive I had to say, and then I heard him say to someone......I'm going to hang up on her, and he did. (so unprofessional) I wrote Mr. Florian a letter and sent it certified mail. He did not respond to it at all. In the meantime, I contacted 2 contractors to come over and look at the deck. One contractor told me the supporting beam under the deck was not continuous from post to post and that this was "NOT COMMON PRACTICE". The other contractor told me there were "NOT ENOUGH FOOTERS". I took this issue to another level and contacted the City of Syracuse Code Enforcement. The inspector that originally came out only viewed 2 of the footers which were O.K. However, Mr. Florian was instructed by the inspector to call when he had the others done so he could come back out and look at those. Mr. Florian "NEVER CALLED CODE ENFORCEMENT". (what was he hiding) By the time the inspector came back out Mr. Florian covered the deck, the inspector could not view the remaining footers or any other supporting structures, the inspector took his word for it that he did it correctly and closed the permit. When the inspector revisited my home, at my request, he then took a look underneath this time and found that the supporting joint had been spliced together and was not a full board as required, and that the boards should be bolted to the 4X4 post due to the weight they have to hold. He also saw that the butting and mitering of the boards are unacceptable. In addition, the inspector also wrote me a letter for court explaining what he had found on his return visit. Without going into the legal end of this situation let's just say justice was not served. My guess is Mr. Florian knew to keep putting me off so the warranty lapsed and my best guess is the statue of limitations ran out on this type of complaint. I leave you all with this.....Mr. Florian is "NOT A MAN OF HIS WORD". He promises to keep his customers happy, as happy customers promotes more business. I AM NOT A HAPPY CUSTOMER OF CUTTING EDGE DECK AND/OR MR. FLORIAN. I AM A CUSTOMER THAT HAS BEEN TAKEN ADVANTAGE OF....DON'T LET THIS HAPPEN TO YOU.
