Quick summary: Highly recommend John if you are looking for a contractor who is honest and doesn't take shortcuts or cut corners. His price is very reasonable comparable to the quality of work he delivers. I found John through friend's friend and hired him to landscape the whole front and back yards in spring 2019. We had no landscape done after the house construction and did not work with any of the hardscape designers. John took our input and did the initial design, and have gone through several iterations to finalize the design and got to work to actually execute. The whole process took ~5 months as it was a huge project with several design changes in between. John is very professional in communicating and also he takes a huge proud of his work, often suggesting different ideas that we haven't thought about that was super helpful. That's not without saying that everything was smooth for the whole 5 months. We had couple of conflicts that neither were happy about, but the real character shows when you go through these adversities; every time, we were able to close our differences and grew our partnerships. One example was his team did not deliver the quality work for the front parking strip concrete, we were unhappy with the outcome. John did not deny this and we agreed on a patch-work solution that we weren't still happy about. Next day, he told me he'd haul the whole 35' parking strip concrete and redo the whole thing again and he did. I know it cost him several thousand dollars but he definitely earned my trust and I can comfortably recommend him to everyone. read more

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TL;DR John is honest, trustworthy and above all a nice person. He is dedicated to get the work done right and would not stop till it's done to his satisfaction. We have recommended him to multiple of our friends and would recommend again without ANY hesitation. We had to get our backyard done(see before and after picture). John started within couple of days of our contract signing. 1. He has his own crew 2. He was clear in his communication and commitments for each day 3. He worked above and beyond to meet not only our high standards but his own standards. He even ended up doing more work than he signed up for in the contract, to make the finished product meet his high expectations. 4. He takes pride in the work he completed 5. He has growing business and with COVID; keeping an open mind of how busy contractors are is important point to understand! With any large project there is always things which comes up but John is always open about how much time it will take and got it done within our satisfaction. I would suggest to keep an open communication with John and be mindful of the fact that these projects always takes longer than originally planned but having a contractor who cares about your home as much he does - you will not be disappointed! If you are looking for a good contractor, who takes pride in everything he does and will finish the job - John is your GUY! read more

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TLDR- Our project is still not done and we had to stop the work midway due to his unprofessionalism. We will be hiring someone else to complete the project. DO NOT RECOMMEND. The biggest mistake we made was hiring this company. We hired John to do our backyard but things soon went south. He does not communicate and is always giving excuses. We signed the contract and he said he will start the next day but they did not show up for 2 days. Then he shows up for a day and says he needs a deposit after working for an hour. In good faith we gave that to him. He stopped showing up, did not take calls nor responded to our messages. He had dug up our yard and just thrown stuff around in that one hour to make us really feel anxious as now our backyard was in a worse state. After repeatedly calling him and he showed up but started lying about everything like he was buying materials or he was waiting for someone. He lied to us that he is licensed under a different name but he's not so beware! Since we paid him and he refused to give it back we let him continue the project. He took money for materials which I have not seen till today. He threw a fit that we need to pay for the labour even though the work wasn't done and not on schedule and no one was showing up to work. Many days no one would show up and we were again frantically calling him and messaging him. We tried to understand if he had any limitations and we could work around it but he constantly lied that everything is fine. He does not have his own crew and he borrows people who work on other crews for tasks is what we learnt through the process. His crew made a mistake and he blamed us for it. He wasn't there on site to guide them and they did what they felt like and he told us he doesn't need to be there and we should have caught the mistake which we couldn't dream of as we didn't know it was an issue and that's why we hired him as we don't have the expertise!! We paid him for labour just so we could get the backyard to a usable state as he said he will be better about communicating and that they would be done on schedule. None of the payments he demanded were according to the contract we signed, he just would not listen and start yelling at us and making a scene in front of our house. Going forward we offered going with him to his supplier or writing a check for any materials directly to a supplier at any time so we knew the materials were ordered but he just wanted to be paid a lump some amount with no explanation. It was a very unpleasant experience. One day he again started shouting at us and demanding more money after there was literally no progress and things escalated when we told him we will pay only after we see progress and at least the grass or pavers were done. He had taken 50% of the payment by then and not done even 30% of the work. He started fighting with us and it reached a point where we had to call the cops since we feared for our lives and our puppies who he threatened to take away. We don't care that our backyard is worse than it was before and we may have to overpay to fix it but the way he threatened us we knew there was no going back. He is very unprofessional and nothing he says is based on logic and reason. DO NOT RECOMMEND!!!!! read more

Home owner beware! I had a Horrible experience with him draining our money without anything to show for it. He has no license or insurance or dedicated crew. He will lie to get the contract and not show up for several days. If you want to pay money and beg him to show up he's your guy. read more

This is my first time posting on Yelp and I feel honored to be the first to review Montes Alto. John, Carlos and the whole team well deserves it. We hired Montes Alto for about 8,000sf landscaping after the home addition construction. No design ideas but only some specific needs we had like 1) brick pavers for front driveways/pathways and back porch areas, 2) a couple zones of lawns and 3) walkways on a side yard with stepping stones. John came up with a draft plan based on our minimum requirements which was good enough to start our design conversation. Then, until we got the final plan, all the discussion was really enjoyable - John was so comfortable to talk to whenever we had points to make: whatever. Our satisfaction level went quite high at this point with this smooth conversation experience. Rather, we worried a bit about how the actual work would be since the estimate was reasonably competitive compared to the other professional we also considered. Well, their work - process, communication (as always), craftsmanship, timeline and the final outcome blew away our worries. Even my parents-in-law who were visiting were so impressed that they happily gave the crews some tips. :-) There were a few issues indeed - sometimes due to my change of decision and other times I didn't like the way it went. No matter what reason it was, this team put my satisfaction on top trying their best to meet my needs within the budget as possible, for instance. Highly recommend Montes Alto with confidence to any of my neighbors who wants a pleasing experience and satisfying outcome with the landscaping project. read more

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We hired John for tiles and pergalo installation. His price was reasonable and did a very good job. We changed the plan after work started basically add some borders to tiles which involves more work. John accepted and did with no additional cost. Definitely will hire him for any future backyard work.! read more

I hired John for the fence on the front yard. I liked the way he works. He checks details that I didn't think of and reminded me. I liked the results. So I hired him for the whole backyard work again. It was rainy season and I changed my mind several time. It delayed a lot more than I think because of those reasons. But he was really patient and listened to me. I highly recommend him to everyone. ;) read more

We have used Montes Alto for multiple projects and results have been 5 star each time :) The first project John helped us out with was our backyard. We were looking for landscaping ideas and collected quotes from several contractors. Not only was the quote from Montes Alto very reasonable but John also brainstormed multiple options and helped us pick the pavers to match our vision. Half way through the project we decide to install artificial grass and John happily accommodated that. The end result was fantastic and we are very happy with the way our fully functional new backyard looks. Since then we have also had John make garden planters for us (which also turned out well) and have referred Montes Alto to other family members in the area. John and his team are true professionals and take pride in the work they do. I would whole heartedly recommend them to anyone looking to hire help for landscaping projects. read more