We originally hired David and his company to do the stucco on the exterior on our home a few years ago to replace aging vinyl and aluminum siding (with insulbrick underneath). During the original project we were mostly satisfied with a few key exceptions where the work was either not what we wanted or we did not feel was done particularly well. What has been worse though is trying to get a repair done where some of the original work was not done properly and was subsequently damaged further by animals. The issues with the original project were as follows:
1. We had agreed in the contract that all of our windows would be given new matching stucco trim. However, once the project was basically done we were told that they weren't going to do one of the basement windows (entire window above grade) as they said they weren't sure what would be under the white vinyl or aluminum trim as it was different than the other basement windows and we were better off leaving it.
2. We required some aluminum flashing on the side of the house along the top of our foundation as the foundation sticks out a few inches beyond the wall of the upper floors - without consulting us, they simply installed black flashing when everything else (eaves, downspouts, exterior windows) is brown (except for the one basement window which they left white) so it matched nothing...
3. At one stage in the process when they were removing the old siding they knocked one of our upstairs windows partially out of its casing into one of the bedrooms cracking the drywall etc.. They re-secured the window in place but we fixed the damage inside ourselves rescuing the trim and mudding the drywall.
4. The caulking colour (a lighter reddy brown) they chose around our windows did not match well to either the windows (dark Brown) or the stucco itself (a tan/gray colour)
In the end we ended up letting these things go as my wife just wanted to have the work be done with and we didn't want to fight and add weeks to the project when the rest of the job appeared to have been done well.
However, this brings us to the issue we have had now.
Last year we began little bits of styrofoam on our driveway and couldn't figure out where it was from. Eventually we figured out it was being cause by squirrels or birds getting in between the stucco and and our roof soffits above my son's bedroom window on the second floor. This was because of a couple inch gap left in this one area between the top of the stucco and the soffit (everywhere else the stucco is much tighter to the roofline). I began trying to get a hold of David last October via email- I never received a response. I then called and left messages and then David would text and tell me that he will call me later that day to arrange repairs and then he would never call or he would say he would come that day to look and never did. This went on for literal months of me trying to get someone to come and see and do the repairs - during which time I tried to do a makeshift fix with some steel wool only for the problem to get worse. Finally in April, David finally sent his son to come take a look. His son came to take a look and took some pictures from ground level (never brought a ladder, never went up to actually look at the problem) and said he would get back to me. We then were told that the work was done properly so it wasn't under warranty and that it was because our soffit was crooked that the stucco wasn't installed tightly to the roofline like it was in other places. We were told we would have to pay for both the stucco to be repaired and for aluminum work for it to not happen again. This was based solely on the pictures taken from ground level on his phone. However I have been up on a ladder to the window and shared pictures showing that not only was there a gap from the stucco but the OSB board installed never even went up to the soffit and that chunks of the insulbrick weren't even removed behind where the stucco was. Again this was all met with the response that the issue was not their fault and that we would have to pay an additional $2,000 to get the job fixed on top of the $30K we had already paid to have the job done in the first place. I pointed out how we had tried to work with them and let go of the multiple things we weren't happy with during the original install but after lots of back and forth we were simply told we'd have to pay to have the problem repaired and wouldn't discuss the anything else until that was done. VERY FRUSTRATING EXPERIENCE by a company that clearly does not actually stand behind their work despite saying they have a 25-year warranty in a case where there was clearly deficiencies in their craftsmanship.
UPDATE: David has come himself to our house and has promised that the issues will be fixed promptly
