This post ended up being a lot longer than I expected. Bear with me:

In the final stages of our garage repair project which included electrical work for new lights, a new 600 square foot membrane roof, refreshing the painting of wood and steel surfaces, and several brick scope components as described below, and we are really having what seems to be an unreasonable time getting the job finished with the masonry contractor. Since I know there are many here that have a lot more experience than I dealing directly with contractors versus having the GC to coordinate, I wanted to share our experience to see if we are being unreasonable in our expectations of quantity and price, or if our intuitions are correct and what we should be doing to get the results we desire.

Scope of the work includedL: 1. Deconstructing the garage parapet shown above down to the roof, and one whythe of masonry below that to the garage lintels, salvaging all possible brick (turned out to be 55%). Reinforcing the existing steel lintels with new angles. Then rebuilding with the best possible match brick plus the salvaged brick and mortar to match as close as possible to the original.

2. Pointing the chimney from the second floor roof to the cap. The mortar here was severely deteriorated and many of the bricks looked like they were just hanging there. No bricks apparently needed replacement, but due to the tile roof this had to be done with a boom lift.

3. Miscelanious pointing, mostly down at the foundation level where joints had deteriorated. Total miscelaneous area repaired adds up to approximately 30 square feet.

The total contract price for those 3 was $10,200 including the cost of brick, steel install, the lift rental, and excluding the permit cost and $200 for hauling away the deteriorated bricks, plus a $1100 coordinating fee to manage the roofer and the electrician. The $10,200 works out to about $40 per square foot for the job, which seems pretty generous compared to other tuckpointing jobs I've been involved in, but we acknowledge that some parts of this job were more involved.

Through the job we added to the scope. The cast concrete coping blocks turned out to be deteriorated beyond repair, so we decided to replace all of them all on both parapet walls with dark brown aluminum coping. The add for removal and affixing wood blocking was $970. We also had a large crack filled in the basement for $690. So the total masonry contract came out to $13,160.

They finished their work and a few things looked like they needed some attention. There was some excessive mortar on the face of brick, Some open joints that were missed, a section of copper flashing that had been previously cut into and caulked to the brick wall that was now just hanging free with space behind it. They also did only random repairs over the garage man door, kind of sloppy in 2 different colors when we were expecting a 100% repoint here:

I gathered up all of my notes and sent them to the contractor and also asked if they could clean the piers and the basement bulkhead down to the ground so the area looked finished. He responded to the punchlist with a cost of $545 to do the cleaning plus $250 to do the tuckpointing over the door, saying it wasn't in scope, and an additional $845 of surprise change orders on work that had already been completed. We were a little shocked by this. We would have expected some extra charges for cleaning, but at nearly $20 per foot we decided we would try working on it ourself first, and beyond that we were not aware of any additions to scope.

The change orders were for

1. coring/slicing a brick wall laterally to install electrical conduit, $225. During the initial walk with the electrician and mason it was noted that this was most likely a direct plaster to masonry wall, and while that wasn't mentioned in the contract, there was nothing to suggest that wasn't picked up in the pricing.

2. resetting 30 bricks in the top course of the garage side wall for $330. This had been discussed early on in the project, but the roofer had noted that it really wasn't necessary since their fascia and gutter and blocking would cover all of that, so we didn't put it in scope. They went ahead and did it anyway.

3. Repointing 4-5 square feet on the back of the garage at the top of the parapet $270. This was noticed and pointed out after the initial walkthrough but early on and there was never any talk of additional costs until after the work was completed.

In addition they noted that the wording "Grind out deteriorated joints above service door" had slipped into the contract, therefore a full tuckpointing of this area would come with additional cost.

We discussed back and forth with the contractor for over a week and had him out on site to review the areas and our thoughts - that the work was done before discussing pricing, in one case before getting direction to go ahead, in another with the electrical work that we understood to already be in scope, and the prices, ranging from $50-60 per square foot was really high for basic work that was performed while workers and materials were already on site. We offered $472 for the three change orders plus $175 to do the area over the man door (noting the quality issues and missed joints that they have to come back to this area anyway.

The mason responded accepting the $472, begrudgingly noting all that he's done on for us on the project including throwing in the lift rental for free without request and implying he felt cheated by that little amount, and responded that they therefore would be passing on the work over the man door (because $175 wouldn't even cover the materials) and that they require payment for the remainder of the job immediately. This amounted to a little over $3000.

We responded that first, that included work that hadn't even been started yet, and that we would be more than willing to pay the remainder upon satisfactory completion of the job. We also said that the area over the man door was very important to us in making the job look finished, and if $250 is what they require to do the work, we would accept that cost.

Two weeks went by while we struggled to get the roofer to commit to a start date (while it's been raining in our garage because there is just a plastic tarp thrown over the top of the unflashed parapet wall). This morning we get an email stating that they will be finished by Friday and expect final payment to be handed over on that day. They again said they would pass on the man door work because we sliced the cost of the other change orders and because we did not submit full payment when invoiced two weeks ago.

At this point, this all seems rather unreasonable to us and we aren't very happy about the way it's been handled. But at the same time we would rather have someone who is on the job and knows the mortar color mix do this work. And it probably would cost $250 or more to bring in someone that isn't already on the job to do such a small piece. But I get the feeling that they will only do it if we agree to pay the other $375 that we were not willing to pay toward the three change orders. As it is I'm delaying responding to them on this issue until after they remove the rest of the coping blocks with the fear they might walk off the job the day before our roofer is supposed to start.

Thoughts? Anything we should have done differently?