Terebinth Exterior Designs

I hired Izzy to replace all the sod at my home last spring (a year ago). It was full of weeds and very lumpy/ uneven. Instead of removing the old sod they simply tilled it in and laid new sod over it. I’m not an expert landscaper, but I know to remove a weed you need to remove it from the root. So no big surprise I had a lot of trouble with dandelions, crab grass and Creeping Jenny coming through the new sod. I literally had to keep on top of it almost every day. My other problem was the sprinklers. Izzy subcontracts all the work and the person he hired to make sure the sprinklers worked properly ripped up my freshly laid sod to move some sprinkler heads. I don’t understand why that wasn’t done prior to the new sod being laid? The sprinkler guy came out several times before the grass was laid, but never did any work until after the sod was in. Therefore, everywhere he moved sprinkler heads left big ruts and divots in my grass. Part of the reason we got new sod in the first place was to try to have a more even/ smooth yard. Izzy did try to fix it by cutting up the sod (last fall) and adding more fill dirt underneath, but that helped minimally in some places and in others it actually made it worse. My main issue though is communication. Through the whole process he has been very slow to respond to any of our issues or questions. Trying to be put on his schedule (even if it’s 2 months out!) just doesn’t happen. Currently I have been waiting a month for him to come take a look at some problem areas. When you pay as much as we did for a new lawn, we had hoped to have fewer problems. It just seems like corners were cut whenever possible. We had a one year “warranty”. Issues were brought up last fall (well within the one year), but he said let’s wait and see how it turns out in the spring. Now of course we still have problems and no Izzy to be found.

This review is for Terebinth Exterior Designs. Overall we were extremely disappointed with Izzy’s work and responsiveness, we are unhappy with the final project, he’s one of the worst contractors that I’ve ever worked with, and we would recommend against using him for any concrete job that you want to improve the look of your home. We got several quotes for the replacement of our driveway in November 2015. He was one of the most expensive quotes, however we cared very much about the look of our driveway, as we had just painted our house and done some landscaping work. The driveway was going to be the finishing touch. We wanted solid construction with good brushwork, and made that very clear in our expectations. His references were strong, and we even drove out to other job sites that he’d done to check his work. He was very responsive and communicated well to get the job started and wanted to start the job within the week, even before we were expecting or needing it done. The weather got quite cold, and he needed to lay down concrete covers to control the temperature. He asked for final payment prior to taking the covers off, and unfortunately my wife paid off the balance before seeing the final work. To our dismay, when the covers were taken off, there were terrible stains all over the entire driveway. I did some research on the internet and read that this can occur if the makeup of the concrete isn’t done correctly, or if moisture builds up along the concrete covers and drips down onto the concrete. It sounded and looked bad, however Izzy spent a large amount of time telling me that this was fine and only “effervescence” that will easily be washed off with a simple power wash, but that it needed a month to cure. A month went by, and no phone call or power wash. I had to chase him down by phone, and then he continued to make excuses on why it couldn’t be done due to cold weather, that it had to be above a certain temperature all throughout the night to be effective, etc. After several months he finally attempted to power wash, but stopped because he had the “wrong detergent.” Unfortunately it looked even worse at this point. It took weeks more before he finally circled back to try again, which required multiple phone calls and texts to get him back out. I actually have a text stream with around 25 texts over 11 months asking why he hadn’t shown up, or clarifying when he was coming. This was in addition to probably 5-10 phone calls, as he didn’t respond multiple times. Ultimately he determined that the stains were unable to be taken out, which was my initial assessment 6-7 months before. He felt that it needed a concrete overlay to get the desired finished product. He assured me that this overlay was going to look amazing, with good brushwork that looks just as good if not better than original concrete. Unfortunately my only choice was to trust him and go forward, as the driveway looked horrible. It took a couple more months of phone calls and texts, with delays and excuses. At one point we couldn’t drive on our driveway to get into our garage for 3-4 weeks because it needed to be sealed and he kept dragging his feet and delaying this. All in all, it took about 11 months to get the job done and the finished product is pathetic. From a distance it looks ok, however up close the concrete overlay is slopped on along the edges and looks like an elementary student put it on, you can see the concrete underneath in many places, and the brush work looks terrible. He is still in business after some years so I expect that we are the exception, however I would be very hesitant to use him for any concrete work, especially in the winter months. To his credit he never completely ditched us and followed up eventually. However he’s very nice and suave on the phone, but in the end he just gave us lip service and empty promises month after month, with an ugly final product.