I have worked with Upstream on several projects. The most-recent in 2014 was a truly terrible…read moreexperience. The proprietor's approach to this (repeat) customer degraded from professional to adversarial. His obsessive need to be right leads to his engaging in many hours of acrimonious e-mails rather than spending a fraction of those hours of warranty work (saving him time and a customer). Also beware weather events that occur more than once-per-year being somehow defined as 'acts of God'. This is unfortunate as the work quality is satisfactory.

My family hired Kirk Wagner at Upstream Waters Landscape to finish the landscaping of our new home,…read moreincluding creating a path to the lake on which the house sits, lay sod in the backyard, plant seed in the front yard, and install some hardscape surrounding the house and in a firepit. The contract was a "time is of the essence" contract in early May because we needed all of the work completed by June 1. As of early June, the work had not yet started. When we arrived to inspect the partially completed work in late June, we found significant deficiencies. For example, the "path to the lake" was complete only about 1/3 of the way from the back of the yard towards the lake, the sod was incomplete, the firepit was incomplete and partly wrong, several of the plants were already dying, part of our gravel driveway had been destroyed from machinery, and the seeding had not yet begun. We had an amicable meeting and Kirk agreed to complete all of the missing pieces by the end of June and we agreed to pay some additional money for a portion of the additional sod that would be installed. It is now June 20. The firepit is complete. But only a small fraction of the new sod is laid and it is all dead. Many more plants are dead. And while the seeding has been done and grass should be growing, it is only growing in a small fraction of the front and side of the lot. Meanwhile, Kirk had told us all work was complete and in good condition and we should pay the final balance without looking at the work, as we were out of town. In our meeting today, instead of giving any timetable for finishing the project or any insight into whether grass would indeed grow (Kirk said bald spots could be addressed after 90 days, but 90 days is the warranty period, so he was essentially telling us to wait until the warranty expired), he said if we did not pay him the balance today (another $4900), he would take us to court. We have already paid $15,000 for his work despite it being substantially unsatisfactory. I'm extremely frustrated at his lack of professionalism and unwillingness to provide solutions for issues he has created.