Top Block Wall Contractors Near San Francisco

This is a small company, essentially a one man show. We originally asked them to give us a bid on pavers. Lee came out, gave an estimate, answered our questions, and more importantly, gave good advice on the process. He walked us through the project, put us in contact with suppliers so we could see the materials, and was careful about designing proper drainage and re use of existing materials and structures. There was some delay due to the size of the company and their availability. We are very happy with the pavers, which have been essentially trouble free. We would give that an A Thereafter we asked for advice to enhance the appearance of the cinder block wall, and again they made good suggestions, provided us with references, and installed the product. There is some leakage through of some rust stains, which they came back to redo. We would give that a B+. We then asked for help with a troublesome irrigation system, that they had NOT originally installed. This was more problematic with some stops and starts, and is still not perfect. Overall, I regard Lee as a straight shooter who knows his business, is willing to help with advice and design, and will come back to look at problems and revisions. There can be delays in communication due to their small size, but he responds to e mail. If you need a big job done tomorrow, use a large firm. We have noted that the work is of better quality when the boss is on site to supervise. We did have some frustration with call backs, but overall would say they did what they said they would do at the price quoted.

We originally found them by knocking on the door of 2 nearby homes with beautiful walls/hardscapes we loved, and both said Dan at Professional Landscaping had done them. Each time we did a project, we also got other bids, but in the end, we know and trust his quality, professionalism, respectful working relationship, and did I mention quality? Once, we had someone else do a fence that was shared with a neighbor, and we totally regretted it. Seemed fine up front, but ended up being poor quality, despite what we thought were very careful discussions and guidelines, and they hit our gas line, as well. Nope, we'll stick with Dan. He works with us very well, which is important. He is not the cheapest, but quality just isn't cheap, and we learned our lesson about what happens when you try to go cheaper. Plus, he has always worked hard to help us find solutions we'll like that will fit in the budget. We appreciate that he offers options in different price ranges, doesn't cut quality corners just to get a bid down, and that he has a small, local crew of employees who get paid a living wage, workman's comp, etc, and who he's shown what it means to be professional. That professionalism includes coming to us with all questions and options that might arise, not just making decisions that we are stuck with; cleaning up at the end of each day, and especially on weekends while work is ongoing; being on-time every day; and just generally being a nice guy. He always has good experience and ideas to share, where decisions need to be made, and while we often go with his knowledgeable recommendations, sometimes we just prefer a different aesthetic, and he is happy to implement whatever we ultimately choose, so is the best of both worlds.

Gophers chewed under former wooden retaining wall and emptied dirt onto concrete next to my house. Plus, large agave plants were also threatening to bring down a 30 year retaining wall. I got two estimates, Chris came out to give me an estimate, measured the wall exactly and followed up with a written estimate. He was also ON TIME and that is huge with me. The work took about 7 days (we were out of town) and about 6-7 people. They replaced the wooden wall with a concrete block wall. It looks fabulous, it will last forever. In the meantime, part of our back fence fell during a recent windstorm. My first call was to QLC and Chris. I don't need another estimate. They are coming out next week to replace a portion of the fence.

I got quotes from four different companies. Craig's was the lowest. The project entailed: -Demolishing a crumbling property wall and erecting a new cinder block one in its place. -Replacing lava rock/cement planters with river rock. -Redoing a patio with paving stones. -Building a pathway of paving stones. -Grouting/grinding big cracks in cement block walls. -Building brick retainer to support listing brick BBQ. -Patching various chipped bricks and cracks in driveway. The crew worked very hard and finished in about 3 weeks. When I told Craig I was unhappy with something, he was gracious and professional enough to offer to redo the work. He was also very patient in dealing with obnoxious neighbors and difficult city inspectors. I was hesitant to write a review just yet, since the work is still in progress, but Craig freely admitted when an initial approach didn't work and genuinely seems to care that we get the aesthetic I'm after. That speaks volumes.

The work went very well overall. Chris Bearden returned all phone calls promptly. He was easy to work with and we resolved all design issues before starting the job. His workers showed up on time and finished on schedule. Accounting was complete and easy to understand. Work quality is excellent. Chris also coordinated his work with the pool contractor who was refinishing the pool plaster.

Wonderful! We bought this house with a rotten deck and immediately took it out only to find out that the deck was on elevated piers and the backyard was not at all graded properly. We knew we wanted a patio with pavers instead of a deck, but didn't know what the elevation would be once it was level. The first guy we called didn't understand grading and tried to convince us to install a large retaining wall and steps to even it all out. Leland was recommended to us by a another Martinez resident. He responded right away to my email and came to see the job and quote us immediately. He took some measurements and discovered that we would not need any steps and we only needed a 1 ft high wall. This was a big deal to me because I felt like the first guy was trying to up sell us. He provided a written quote the next day ($2K less than the first guy) and we signed the contract. Since we hadn't seen the pavers or Allen blocks aside from the brochure, he recommended that we go to Brickyard and pick out what we wanted (I took this to mean that he wanted to be sure we would love it when he installed it). We emailed him what we wanted and left town for a few days. By the time we came back, he was nearly finished (he worked labor day). He quoted us a week and a half and really took 4 days. He started and worked straight through. It looks perfect, exactly what we wanted. He knew we were price conscious so he recommended that we seal it ourselves and told us what to buy. We already thinking about Phase 2 and Phase 3, walking around our yard, he knew a lot about landscaping, types of plants, grass and made recommendations (even though that wasn't part of the job). He was really easy to work with, had a great crew, really responsive, overall great guy.

The craftsmanship of the work was nothing short of excellent. The local site work supervision was occasionally spotty (except when we followed the work closely ourselves) which occasioned some rework. When surprises arose (as they do in an 80 year old house with landscaping at least 30 years old) I believe we were sensibly advised as to the options available to us within the scope of our budget and practical considerations. For example, we had to rework the design of a section of the side yard when we learned that the sewer lines and house foundation were not compatible with the plans. Also HGCG workers added some touches to help the new hardscaping to blend in more harmoniously with the existing hardscaping. We haven?t yet gone through a rainy season, so the final report has yet to be made. But a check of elevations and slopes indicates that all will be well on the drainage front.. The only negative was the selection of one of the materials that was used, the silver travertine pavers. They are nothing short of breathtakingly beautiful when they are new. However, the iron in the travertine (the amount of which varies with the source of the travertine) dissolves in acid and then reacts with oxygen to form rust. This rust looks like rusty red stains or pits. Thus, any source of acid, including leaves/needles from redwoods and pine trees, or the cleaning done by the crew with muriatic acid, will cause pockets of red to form. Mike Mikolajcik, an owner of HGCG, stated that there had never been a problem with cleaning the travertine with muriatic acid. We have no reason not to believe him, but the travertine material that was used in our job did form rust pockets and stains when cleaned by his crew with muriatic acid. (A side note: Information available from the US govt about cleaning buildings faced with travertine warns against using acid to clean travertine because of the reaction of the iron with the acid.) Leaves from our redwood tree also caused localized spotting. We were not pleased with Mike?s reaction to our observations about the reaction of travertine with acid; he believed it was the ?fault? of our healthy redwood tree. Our opinion is that the redwood tree was there when he suggested the travertine material and that he did not know that the silver travertine material was not compatible with the presence of a source of acid. We figured out that a cleaning with white vinegar, followed by an immediate water rinse and high velocity blow dry, would remove the red spots. To the credit of HGCG, a crew came out and did exactly that, followed immediately by a sealing step. That sealant is not protecting the travertine from rust oxidation (I write this two months after the final cleaning and sealing). However, I think we still like the appearance of the rusty silver travertine better than we would like pavers or concrete. It may, long term, provide a better color match with the retaining walls and our soft-scaping. Sadly, this was a bit of a sour end to what was, on the whole, a highly satisfactory project.