Great Fences and Decks

Orlando did the back fence for me and my backyard neighbor. The fence came out nice and was a good price, so I called him again when I needed to replace my side fence. When I got a quote for the side fence, he upped the price per linear foot. He said the wood had gone up in price. I said I thought it was too steep so he said he would stain the fence as well. He had to cancel the first time he came out for a legitimate reason, but then he wanted to do the fence in a single day (without letting the concrete set). I refused and he accepted that so he took 2 days to do the job right. The day he was actually building the fence I got a call in which he said the existing hardware in my 14 year old gates were in too bad of shape to be reused. I was very confused, why would you reuse hardware when you’re building brand new gates? But he was going to use new hardware regardless, so no harm, right? Later I got another call when he informed me that he was only going to stain my side of the fence and not my neighbor’s side. What is the point of only staining one side of the fence? I’m not an expert but I think water will get in through the other side and still rot the fence, right? I managed to convince him to stain both sides of the fence, but wasn’t happy that it required convincing at all since that was part of our deal. The quote even said «stain the fence» not «stain half the fence».
Then I came home to inspect the fence. Now I’m not an expert, as I’ve said before, and, unfortunately for me, my wife is an expert in everything ;) I thought everything looked fine, but then she comes home and finds at least 3 boards that were missing stain. Then not too much later I realized one of my gates drags across the ground. Also, whoever stained the gate on one side of my house managed to get a nice stain outline on the side of my house that I have not been able to remove. And one of the gate handles was not screwed into the diagonal support beam so the other screw was sticking out of the back side of the gate.
I emailed him about these things, but never heard back. Now it was only one email, so if I had called and emailed again, maybe I would have gotten a response…
Also, when everything was said and done and he was ready to go, I got a sob story about how he didn’t think he was going to have to pay to stain my neighbor’s side of the fence and he asked me for extra money on top of what he quoted me. Obviously I didn’t have to give him anything, but I sure don’t appreciate having to feel guilty because of his sleazy sales tactics.
I have another side of my fence to fix, and when it comes time, I think I will go with someone more professional.

Orlando is the face of the company and he is very responsive and helpful. The completed work was just OK. Seemed great at first but a few things started nagging me about the job. First it took longer than promised because there was not enough material and then he ran out of stain. The metal posts were cut quickly and crooked so the caps don’t sit straight. Left quite a mess in my yard and grass was beaten up; took a few weeks of cleaning up little piles of wood, rock and concrete. They don’t bother to remove the little paper tags stapled to the bottom of the planks and these stick out like a sore thumb so I have been pulling hundreds out myself. They don’t bother to pre-​drill the big gate hardware bolt holes so the wood splits badly. Finally he never finished staining and won’t return my calls because I already paid him (my fault for being too trusting).

Orlando and his guys took more than 2 wks to get my fence done, instead of 2 days as promised. He took our «material» money, removed the old fence, and disappeared for 2 weeks. Guess what? That’s not the worst part. The worst thing is the fence didn’t come out right. It is not even straight. The corners are uneven. It’s so bad that even my 5 year old daughter notices too. This is what she said about a corner that joins between our fence and the neighbor’s fence (neighbor’s fence is done by Orlando guys too). She said, «one is low, one is tall, and one is very tall».

Orlando and his crew did a great job! He was very attentive and personally came to install my door which ended up being more difficult than originally thought but didn’t charge me any additional fee. He showed up on time actually to the second for the estimate and completed the project on a timely manner. I would highly recommend them!

First of all, I have to seperate this man’scompany from his brother’s with a similiar name. The person I am reviewing is Orlando Rivera who has made a seperate company for himself and his workers now. I contracted him to build a fence. We had some intial problems with supplies but once he was there he did a beautiful job. After pulling some boards down he found termites had eaten some of the fence I was using and he waited until I got home from work to show me what he found. He was absolutly right that the fence needed replacing. I had my ex– husband who was a previous general contractor come by to look at the fence to make sure that it was being built accordingly and he said that not only was it a great job but that he was going to hire him also! He also stained the fence for me and trimmed the trees behaind the fence. My fence looks like a work of art now! Great job!