LA Decks are terrible. We had an absolutely miserable experience with them for our pergola/trellis construction. They did shoddy work, showed up consistently late or not at all, and even raised the price of the project in the middle construction despite no changes to the project. Estimates to fix problems left by LA Decks are in the THOUSANDS of dollars.
We have done quite a bit of work over different projects and properties, and have had excellent builders and terrible ones. LA Decks ranked at the bottom. The following is just a very condensed summary, don’t have enough space or energy to list the extra hassle, delays, and costs involved in dealing with LA Decks. We are going to have to pay a lot more money and spend lots more time and effort just to get things fixed that were done badly by LA Decks.
LA Decks caused problems almost immediately. Despite promises to the contrary when we signed the agreement, LA Decks pushed back the start date without explanation. This created a big mess since all other trades were already scheduled, and involved lots of extra time, hassle, and stress for all involved. By the way, trying to get return calls from LA Decks often took days and it often felt that LA Decks attitude was one of doing us a favor to actually call back.
The LA Decks crews were often undermanned and almost never adequately supervised. Multiple items, such as concrete pours for footings, were improperly framed and would have caused even more delays, cost, hassle etc if we hadn’t caught them (see photos).
After the demolition of the previous structure and the concrete footings were done the crew just disappeared and left all the trash including concrete, wood, metal etc from the demolition and work that they had promised to haul away lying in the middle of the yard (see photo). Tried to get them to come out and clean up as promised, nope. We then had to have the materials removed ourselves with even more hassle, time and expense.
During construction of the pergola structure itself, LA Decks failed to put down any covers on the brand new patio tiles underneath the pergola even though we had pointed this out. In fact, the only reason this was an issue is that LA Decks had pushed out the project for so long that the patio tiles eventually were installed first. This resulted in stains in the brand new tile, which led to, again, more hassle and expense on my part to get this taken care of (see photos).
The stain/paint or whatever LA Decks slapped on to the structure produced an uneven result and began to drip off as large brown splotches, a little bit at first and then a lot a couple months later when we had significant nighttime humidity/condensation. It ran down all over the new patio stones and new patio furniture. Fortunately for us we had just to have placed furniture covers the night before or the brand new furniture could have been ruined (see photos). These brown drips had been pointed out to LA Decks previously and they said it was just “sap” from the wood and that this sap would continue for a year at least. Got an evaluation for repair, estimator said the initial stain/paint was not properly applied and no sealant was used. This will again require lots of cash, time and hassle to fix. Don’t know about anyone else, but my regular job doesn’t allow for a bunch of extra time to constantly chase down guys like this for them to do their job.
The structural work itself was sloppy with poor workmanship. Some of the joints were cut irregularly and sloppy. Rather than just having cut it straight and neat, LA Decks solution was to slap a hideous “Bondo” type of putty on the surface to hide the mess. For example, the wood they used to cover metal floor already had started to come apart and was slathered with more “Bondo” stuff in what looks like an attempt again to hide poor workmanship (see photos).
We don’t know how LA Decks possibly could be getting any other positive reviews. We are very sorry I had to deal with LA Decks at all and are stuck with a mess created by them.