James G. (Hawthorn Woods, IL)

A couple of years ago it was brought to my attention by the company who usually does our chimney maintenance every year that we would need the top portion of our chimney rebuilt.  At the time I requested our present chimney service to give me a quote which I later found out to be way too high. I put off doing the chimney repair until this year. 
I searched Angie’s List for 3 good rated companies. To my surprise one was the chimney service I had been using for the past 5 years. 

My first call was to Coast to Coast Masonry. I spoke to Roman Zajac who was very pleasant and accommodating on meeting me for the inspection and estimate of rebuilding the chimney. 

Roman arrived on time and proceeded to unload his ladder and went up to the chimney to do the inspection. After the inspection Roman sat down with me and explained in detail what needed to be done. I expressed my concern with matching the bricks and mortar to the original chimney. He assured me he could match the bricks. I was very impressed by his thoroughness and detail of the work that was to be performed. I noted everything we talked about in my notebook just in case the contract he was to send me had a discrepancy. I told Roman that I will keep him in mind and had a couple more estimates from other companies that I wanted to interview with.   

I set up a estimate from the next company and they never even knocked on my door. They just sent a person out who didn’t even have a ladder to inspect the chimney and proceeded to send me a estimate for tuck pointing only. I never even considered this company. 

So a couple of days later I received a contract via email and mail from Roman. To my delight every aspect of what we talked about was in the contract word for word. This was probably the most detailed contract I have ever seen. It listed in detail every step of the work they would be performing. I was really impressed. 

In the meantime I had called my usual chimney service and they showed up and proceeded to give me a quote much higher than Coast to Coast quote, so my decision was to go with Coast to Coast. 

I called Roman and told him I would like Coast to Coast to do the work and I would send him the contract via mail to start work. 
Roman gave me a start date a couple of weeks out and we were all set. 

A couple of days later Coast to Coast came out to measure bricks for size and color. Stanley was the guy who came out and he seemed very detailed in measuring and sizing up the bricks. Stanley showed me a couple of bricks he had brought with him for my approval in color. 

Day 1-  Coast to Coast came out and started the work of demolishing the top half of the chimney. It was noisy but that’s to be expected. My concern was just how messy was it going to get?  It looked like most of demolition was almost complete after the first day. Once they left after day one I went out to the work site to see what kind of mess was left. To my delight the crew had cleaned everything up and kept the area very organized. I was also happy that they protected my air-conditioning unit from any debris that would have fallen into it. 

Day 2- The remaining of the demolition was completed and the rebuilding process was started. After a few rows of bricks had been completed I noticed that the new brick and mortar did not seem to match, I immediately called Roman to express my concern and he came right over to check on the situation. As I am not a masonry Roman assured me once it was all dry it will match the rest of the brick. I told Roman that I will trust his judgement on this so it was a wait and see situation.  Coast to Coast even replaced bricks in the corner of another area of the chimney going that extra mile. Once again the after the day 2 the crew kept the area clean and organized. 

Day 3- The rebuilding continued and by then I could see by now the bricks after partially drying from the day before were beginning to match the rest of the chimney, I was relieved. The chimney was mostly completed on day 3 with the exception of the cap. 
Again the crew kept everything clean. 

Day 4- A few days had gone by due to some rain and time to let bricks and mortar to dry, Coast to Coast returned to complete the the cap on the chimney and to finish up some tuckpointing on the rest of the chimney. Coast to Coast came back a couple of days later to apply the water seal to the entire chimney. 

Overall I was very impressed with the way Coast to Coast did the job at hand. I highly recommend this company. The honesty of such a company is very rare these days and it truly was a delight to see Coast to Coast performing a honorable service. 

Thank You Coast to Coast.

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