Magana Construction

I hired Ruben and his crew to do a major job at my house that took almost 3 weeks. They were on time, respectful and did everything I asked for. If I wasn’t happy about something, Ruben made sure it was corrected immediately. His prices were competitive and the work was well done. Everyone who has seen the worked has been very impressed — they thought they were at a different house. Ruben is a perfectionist and made sure that everything was done correctly. I would hire them again and recommend them to my friends and family. Great job, Ruben — keep up the good work!

They were fantastic, just had new steps and patio poured. Ruben and team were easy to work with, fair price and Ruben project management the entire process on site himself.
It was great to see and support a local business.

I hired Magana Construction to pour a 26 foot long concrete porch, steps and walkway in front of my house. After securing the proper permits the job began. The crew had a very difficult time removing my existing porch, which was a small concrete 5-​step porch. It took them 5 days of jackhammering and they simply could not remove it. They were using a 90 lb. jackhammer. In the process they broke a corner off the concrete landing in front of my door. (learned later that a real professional outfit would have used a dozer-​mounted jackhammer and had that porch out in 3 hours).
They left a good part of the porch intact, giving up on total removal, saying that it was low enough to pour the new porch over it. The crew (who I suspect was drunk half the time or hung over) began to pour the «footing» or substructure for the porch. They then constructed a rough rebar «cage» into which they tossed many large oddly shaped pieces of old concrete as a filling for the porch. During this process, they threw a few of those concrete boulders at the face brick in front of my house, chipping it in several places. The workers were careless and only stopped it after I yelled at them.
Next came the wooden form for the 27-​foot long X 6-​foot wide concrete porch. The wooden form looked out of true to me, describing an angle in towards the house and away again. I mentioned it, but was told «it’ll be OK».
After 7 tons of concrete were poured into this form, the surface was bull floated and smoothed out, and the stairs were poured at the same time. After some time had elapsed, they pulled the forms away, revealing quite a mess.
In many spots, the entire surface of soft cement was pulled away with the form, revealing deep craters of exposed aggregate. They scrambled against time to smooth these defects out with trowels, but the concrete was setting fast. They didn’t have time to correct the dozens of defects of exposed aggregate and cratering. The corners of the porch began to droop like melted ice cream. The steps were concave in the center, and of unequal height and length. The entire porch was wavy and uneven. The vertical front face of the porch looked patchy, with uneven patterns, and rough aggregate showed in many spots. Sure enough, the out-​of-​true form created an out-​of-​true concrete surface, angling away from my house, and in towards it again. There wasn’t a proper 90 degree angle on any corner in the whole porch.
In addition, the crew was very negligent in putting boards under the heavy bobcat bulldozer that rolled over my beautiful lawn, pressing deep trenches in my turf, and the grass in those trenches has since died from filling with rainwater not being able to soak into the compressed earth.
When the Stickney building inspector came to look at the finished project, he said it was the worst pour he had ever seen in his 18 years as an inspector. I was told the entire thing had to be torn out and done over. the steps were a safety hazard. Reuben offered to tile over the mess with stone «squares», or something like that, saying that «it’ll be just fine».
After seeing the incompetence demonstrated by Reuben Magana and his crew, I opted not to trust them to redo the project, having lost all belief that they were capable of anything better. I demanded a full refund.
I gave Ruben $ 9000 in advance for this job. He refunded $ 4800, claiming the concrete «footing» was worth $ 2900 and could be re-​used. He also kept $ 300 just for pouring gravel and leveling the surface in preparation for my walk. I hired Andreas Concrete of Cicero, IL, to tear out the mess and redo it. Their estimate is $ 12,500.
I lost $ 4200 to the Three Stooges like incompetence of Reuben Magana and his crew of clowns. Now my porch will cost me over $ 16,000 in total.
Magana Construction cost me lost time, an incredible about of aggravation and stress, the inability to go on a scheduled vacation due to the extra expense and time required to redo the project, lost airline tickets, a ruined lawn, several chipped face bricks, and a busted concrete doorway threshold.
I am going to notify every neighboring town’s village hall to beware of Magana Construction, and I will file a grievance with the Better Business Bureau.