Why Go With A Contractor Quoting Only 5 - 6 bucks a Square Foot In Design Concrete Work?

Then some yahoo comes in off the street with a wheel barrow and a beat up truck with the idea he can do designer concrete, and under-quotes everyone at $5 or $6 a square foot. What the homeowner often does not realize is that there is $4/square foot in material costs. There is concrete, sealer, colors, lumber, etc. It is really hard for me to think that a homeowner is willing to trust their permanent piece of art (that is a large investment by the way) to someone only making a $1 per square foot. Even the people who pour plain concrete sidewalks & driveways want to make $1 per square foot. So now, you are going to trust your thousand to tens of thousands dollars into someone’s hands like that to give you something in your front or backyard that is going to make you proud? Just because the customer is shopping price? When I hear about jobs priced at half of what they should be, a flag goes up in my mind. There is something wrong here. How do you know that this contactor will not skip town? Or just throw down a slipshod job? I had a customer in southeast Huntsville who had one of those kinds of contractors. The guy came in and got the money. Formed their back patio up, but did not pour anything. Didn’t even grade it. Left the forms up. Said he would wait until after winter breaks and that he would come back to finish the job in the spring. Well, spring came and went, and needless to say, he never came back. If the guy has six of those that month, and the guy goes from town to town to town and you can’t find him, you in bad luck. Then I come up, and quote the price on what it should have been quoted at. Right now that is around $10 a square foot and that customer has 500 square feet, then that is going to be $5000 on top of the original $2500 taken by the fraudulent contractor. Then it needlessly costs the customer, $7500 to get the job done right.

This kind of thing can hurt the overall decorative concrete industry. In Alabama, mostly, there are no state requirements for license, workers comp, and there should be. Some yahoo can go to work for a professional decorative concrete contractor for a month or 2 and think they know it all. Then go out, and get a stamp or two, tell everyone they know how to do it, and start their own business. Then go out and start doing work. Then throw down anything no matter how sloppy or ugly it is. The whole thing about decorative concrete work is that is an art form. Its not a… throw it out there and machine it or broom it until it is dead and walk away. It is an art. It has to be something you really have to love to do and love to achieve perfection. And my whole goal is to get it to the point to when someone walks up on my job, they do not know that it was concrete but that they think that real stone, tile, cobblestone, or brick etc. was laid. They should see one of my concrete countertops and say something like, “What kind of countertop is that?” If I do a vertical concrete veneer, they should say, “Where did you buy that stone? I have never seen that kind of stone on a wall before.” That is the difference between us and the rest of the yahoos trying to imitate us. They call that the wow factor.

I was born in the south, here in Alabama, but grew up in Southern California. I have been stamping concrete for several years. The whole concrete stamping industry started out there. Back then, they started out with big steel stamps. Heavy. Then it went to fiberglass. Then in the 80’s it went to our current rubber stamps. Then before long, classes started coming out that would teach you how to stamp your own concrete. The main problem with that is that the how-to-clinics are teaching you how to stamp concrete on a 4x4 pad. These companies may have good products, but they do not really teach you the ins and outs of decorative concrete that really takes years of experience to learn. Those kind of classes should tell you that if you are not willing to pay attention to the small details, then this is not for you. If you do not have a love for perfection, then this line of work or job is not for you. It really takes a special kind of eye, a love, to really get things right. You are never satisfied. The imperfections will always show on jobs done by amateurs. When I go up to a 2 million dollar home and show the people my portfolio of 40 walkways and 80 driveways that are built to perfection. Work I have done. Commercial stuff I have done like malls, libraries, etc. They will say WOW! Ten years of excellence that we can demonstrate. Why would they want to go with the yahoo with a wheelbarrow and no idea of what they are doing? You want to pay for good work. You want to do something to your home that is really going to add beauty to it. You will want to start living outdoors basically. The whole thing behind decorative concrete is that you are taking your indoor living outdoors. You want it to look as pleasing outdoors as it is indoors. Why would you want your walkway to have three colors of red just because your $6 a square foot contractor did not have the experience in how to make it come together? I am not saying I am the only one that has this kind of experience but you have to watch you money, because you could be crying at the end of this deal. Those kinds of guys will not come back either. Concrete is not easy to change. It is not like drywall or paint. Just tear that drywall out or just paint over it. No it really takes work to remove concrete. Try to take out a 3 by 3 piece of sidewalk, then imagine taking out a 20 by 40 concrete job. Very labor intensive. That is why when something goes wrong, the cheaper, less qualified contractor, will not come back. They can’t afford to. There is no money left in the job. Oftentimes those kind of people can’t even be found later. They move to another town and often use a cell phone for their business that is changed easily. No office. No regular business phone. No ads. No website. Most people need to understand that when they spend 5 to 20 grand on a job, then they better find a business that is established. They are risking a lot of money. If you don’t care to risk that kind of money and you don’t care what it looks like, then have at it… go ahead. But if you do care, then you need a professional decorative concrete professional with an established business. If I had you to come paint my house, I would want to see what kind of work you have done. Back when me and my wife was building our house, we had two guys coming up wanting to drywall our house. They quoted the same price as a licensed drywall contractor, but when I asked for their license, insurance, and tax id number. They said no, no, no. They did not have any of that. I said to them. Guys, your price is same as I got from a contractor. He has everything. He is licensed. Has insurance. Ad in the paper. Pays payroll taxes. Everything… You two do none of this and you want to charge the same as the licensed contractor? You know what? I won’t give you that job for that reason. You may be moonlighting. What they do is work for a contractor and find out what he is charging, quit, and then do the same. Not realizing what it took to get the business to that point. The licensed contractor after all expenses may just be making it, with all the expenses, and taking the risk. Doing all the right things when these two knucklehead know it alls just act like they know what they are doing and are taking work away from the established business. In fact I had one worker, one time, that quit on me and a few months later I heard he was stamping concrete. I called him, and he said yeah I am just trying to make a living but he was quoting way to low. Next thing I know, I hear about a job he did that was all messed up and he was nowhere to be found!

The customer needs to have a red flag go up in his mind when he is quoted an unusually low rate on a job. I had to tell the client that they really just got what they paid for when they called me out to that mess of a deco concrete job. Shame on them. If they had called a reputable company and not gone with the cheapest bid, then they would not have that mess that cost them thousands. Good luck finding the guy. He had a cell phone but now is gone. He could be another town next week and change his number. As a consumer, you should always ask, “Why is he quoting a price this low?”
Ken Moody
Owner of Ken's Concrete