Residential Concrete & Design

John helped our family with a wall and fence at our new home in Encinitas. John and his guys were able to think outside the box to come up with some excellent solutions to our various fence issues and problems. They do fantastic work and really pay attention to detail, all at a fair price! They do high quality work quickly and efficiently. I look forward to working with John and Residential Concrete going forward, and would highly recommend his services.

I met with John, very excited to have him do the work. He said he’d get back to me. I have tried to reach him by phone and email — no response. This isn’t the way to get more work. I’m very disappointed. As a professional interior designer, I need to have contractors I can depend on. I’ve worked with some of my contractors for over 30 years — we establish relationships and work together on different projects over the years.
I had hoped John would be one of them.

After meeting John and getting our initial quote, my husband and I were excited to get started on our courtyard wall project. John seemed to be very knowledgeable, friendly, and professional, and we really didn’t have any initial concerns. When we were ready to get started, however, we found it difficult to reach John, as he wouldn’t return phone calls or emails. In fact, after 3 weeks of attempting to reach him, I finally sent a message notifying him that I was going to start looking for another contractor… he called back in less than a minute. I voiced concerns about his lack of communication and he assured me that he would be more responsive in the future. In the end, that was not the case. I attempted to set a start date for the project and he told me that he would look at his schedule and get back to me. Nothing. I tried several times to reach him over the next 9 days and finally decided that his lack of communication was a huge red flag and we are now going with another masonry company for the job.

I hired John to build a retaining wall on the back side of my property. John was prompt and responsive during the quoting and pre-​work phases of the project and he did a good job working with the city to understand some tricky aspects of the city code. In the end, he designed a sturdy, well constructed wall. I would have given him four, maybe five, stars except that the project didn’t finish very well. As a part of John’s bid, he was supposed to move my existing fence back to meet the newly constructed wall. First, the new land that I got back has a rather large hump in the middle that finishes off by sloping down towards the wall edge. I wish I had known that that was going to happen. I can’t set a table, swing set, or anything that requires level grade on the new land. Second, the fence that John moved back is worse off than it was before. He used small, 1−5/8″ galvanized poles that Home Depot nor Lowes sell hardware for (they start at 1−7/8″). His workers left gaps in-​between fence planks that they filled with half planks that are in some cases not level with the other planks. If this was the extent of the fence problems, I’d shrug it off, but unfortunately there’s more. There were two fence doors on my existing fence. When they were moved and remounted along with the fence, they no longer closed correctly and the locking hardware was mounted on a board that only fastens to the last ½ inch of the 2×4. Basically, the planks that hold the locking hardware are now dangling from the rest of the fence. I left John a voicemail about these issues shortly after he finished the job. I never got a return call. In the end, I’m happy with the wall itself, but John’s team could have done a better job with the finishing work. I’ve had to correct quite a bit of it myself and there are still issues that I’ll have to live with.

John and team did a fantastic job, they were on time, on target and on budget. I would highly recommend!

I had a great experience with John doing my concrete resurface and sealing. They kept everything clean and put everything back the way it was before they started. Now my patio and driveway looks awesome!

John did a great job on our back patio! We had a horrible stain on the concrete (walnut wood stain on regular concrete.) He had a great idea to create a mottled stain to conceal the dark stain. it transformed our backyard!
We paid great attention to detail. Great, great work. I highly recommend…

John takes great pride in his work whether it be as small as trip hazards or as large as decorative decks. John respects his customers time and provides quality work at a great price. Value, quality and customer service with a smile.

We interviewed about 5 different concrete/​masonry guys. We went with John w/​Residential because it felt like he had the most experience, would do quality work, and at the same time he quoted a fair price.
We had a patio and a masonry wall build with drain and some steps. They started and finished on time. They worked hard and did good work. I would use this company again and would high recommend them. Oh, they were easy to work with and remained flexible to changes I requested as the project progressed.

John Merklinger and his team did an outstanding job with our total backyard re-​do. We went down to all dirt, totally leveled the entire backyard. We had a retaining wall added to extend the yard, BBQ island, fire pit. All flagstone with 5 drain locations (so laying the flagstone was a real hard job and it was done awesome).
The entire job was a big one and we had 5 – 6 guys working everyday for 4 weeks. I was really impressed with the effort and work that they put into the job. Tony, was the lead «worker» when John was not there and I really appreciated his abilities and care in doing the job right and going the extra mile each time. Armando also was a great worker and showed that he cared and did things with real integrity.
The job was a design in progress so we were designing as we went along which was the best part about working with John and his team. We worked together to create a beautiful yard. John was very flexible and reasonable, we had very few price changes and each one was a bargain as the design changed on my request which added more work, so it was very fair.
Now that’s is all done the final outcome is just outstanding. If you want to work with someone who is professional and reasonable, and fair, then I recommend John. Also note, we interviewed 15! contractors. Half of them did not even return a bid, several did not even show up. The prices were all over the place. We chose John because we thought we would be able to work best with him and his personality, and his prices were on the lower side of the spectrum, so it was a good deal too.
One small bit of advice, always test your grout colors! Amazing how the grout can change the entire look of the flagstone or tile. Thank god we remedied what could have been a real disaster by changing the grout/​mortar color of the flagstone.

John and Tony from Residential Concrete did a great job on our home in Encinitas. John was consultative from the very beginning with a number of great suggestions that improved our overall design. He was very flexible in terms of providing a number of options for finish and design elements. We made a few changes during the process and his team adapted very quickly. As with any project there can be a few surprises — and we had our fair share; John was fair with pricing and we survived the process without seeing a major increase in the initial estimate. Tony was exceptionally good — very diligent and professional. Great crew and appreciate the work you guys did to make our home look great!

Residential Concrete and design did an amazing job on my backyard patio and BBQ. They do great stamped concrete work that really improves the look of my backyard. I would recommend them to anyone looking for a new patio, driveway, sidewalk or Fire pit.