Terrible experience, lives up to every contractors nightmarish story
McAfee refinished first deck two years back, mid project after quoting, they claimed they couldn't absorb the costs the remove the old decking and wanted to deck over the old deck. I agreed, reluctantly as a new home owner. The decision caused obvious problems, mostly elevation and making the connected portions higher than foundation of the house causing water problems. I want to continue to deck project (connecting previous project with replacing and leveling older deck still in place, but connected) I called mcafee because i figured they were best suited to solve the elevations issue.
Day one had a great contact stayed in touch and planning was going great. Day two I text that contact person, he tells me he is no longer woking for them. Day three they bring some kids out to pour cement foundations and solve the leveling issue of existing deck.
Heres a 21 century tip to contractors, most people have cameras these days. Day three was full of "alerts" from the camera to my watch. Standing in front of the cameras, owner is asking the kids what they should do, the kids are responding, " I don't now" thats your decision. Several other video alerts show owners badmouthing me, the "employer". He is there for only a few moments, and leave the kids to do whatever they decided. I continue to get alerts throughout the day of the conversations from the kids making comments about the contractor, they didn't know him, he didn't seem to know what he was doing. They just got to know him this morning when he called and asked if they wanted to work on a deck project. So leaves unknown workers on the job, no security.
I arrive home and check the work for the day. The main girder (from the lower deck that supports the upper deck) has been cut into three pieces, leaving a dangerous situation for the lower deck. Keep in mind, the project was only to level out the existing deck as foundation had sunk over the years. They cut through the girder to place new cement foundations, so I checked those cement pours, which are in sono tubes. They dont look right, off center for the brackets and they didn't even dig. So I push on one, and it simply falls over. No rebar, not foundation and no hole. Earthquake number one would have been a mess.
I hired another contractor to fix it all, ultimately having to demo the lower deck to create safe working conditions. I paid McAfee 5K for three days of bad work. I certainly dont expect a refund, as I simply can't stomach the interaction. I already had to endure how I was low balling them, and he wasn't making any money, etc. Conversations had just a few hours early were argued by the owner as though he didn't recall any of them. One video clip actually shows owners telling kids, this guy (me) is wasting all his money on other projects (pointing to landscaping I have done) when he should be paying me more for these projects. Still tempted to post all videos on youtube.