Stepnstone Landscaping

Igor S. on Stepnstone Landscaping

Stepnstone installed almost 600 sqft of pavers outside our home along with a new small retaining wall. Jorge was professional and meticulous in his work, communicated well, and was reasonably priced. Each day, when he was done for the day, he cleaned up after himself and organized all materials/tools/machinery neatly. And importantly, when minor issues arose during the project, they were amicably resolved.

Consider Jorge & Stepnstone for your hardscaping needs.

shayan moaphi on Stepnstone Landscaping

Jorge did a great job with landscaping our front lawn. He installed a new paver stone patio and step stones, graded the lawn, installed new sod, and planted a garden bed with much and river rocks, all within budget. Jorge was also very helpful with ideation. This is the second time that I’ve worked with Jorge and have been happy with the outcome both times!

Brian Black on Stepnstone Landscaping

We hired Jorge and the team at Stepnstone to fix a retaining wall and build a stone patio for our front yard and we were very impressed with his work. Not only was the work done well but his communication skills and professionalism are above reproach. also. He was always on time and called when he said he would, which is a refreshing change from the other contractors we've dealt with over the last few years. We wouldn't hesitate to use Jorge for similar services again!

Ahmad Harb on Stepnstone Landscaping

Downgraded to 1 star as the emotional and rude reply full of false claims deserves that as well as we just noticed the audacity that there were photos posted from our house without permission and without even completing the job which was just finished by another contractor with better quality, twice as fast and half the rate per sqf!”

I have been contemplating writing this review for a while now because I never write any negative reviews as you can see on my profile unless it is absolutely necessary and in this case we definitely believe that we should share our experience with Stepnstone and Jorge.

Starting with positives:
- Initially, Jorge was friendly and nice and honest about what we should do.
- Initially, Jorge would take his time and patiently apply the steps needed to get the pavers work done.
- Jorge took time to advise on other issues as we had a basement leak midway through the work and Jorge gave advise that although he eventually left us with badly done pavers that cause puddles right at the top of the basement stairs..
- Jorge was nice enough to accept a pause on the work when we got the leak and to continue the unfinished parts a few months later.

As for the negatives:

1- Only 60% of our work was done despite taking 70% of the money for it. We did have to stop the work due to the basement leak repairs, but Jorge was supposed to return and he never did.

2- There is a temper and pride at play that made Jorge sensitive to any request from us as clients, he would often called me "picky" for pointing out issues, but the customer is always right in the matters of taste and it is our right to get our money's worth. On the last day we saw or heard from Jorge, he struggled with grinding a tree stump leaving us with its aftermath of tiny wood pieces all over the new sod despite me asking many times to do it before any other work and we later discovered he had placed a lot of the wood shards under a textile behind our shed without telling us which became refuge for animals and instead of apologizing he proceeded to ridicule us for finding that inconvenient and mocking that we would like to be barefoot on the grass.

3- Despite charging rates of bigger companies (i.e. Overchraging), Stepnstone is pretty much a one-man show and apart from Jorge there are no experienced workers, our backyard was used as training grounds for randomworkers off kijiji which left us with bad uneven sod and wasted a lot of our material and stones.

4- Towards the last couple weeks of Jorge being around, his approach changed and I could see himrushing with the work and cutting corners which left us with several gaps that he kept saying "will be fixed at the end" including concerning puddling water in certain areas and incomplete/cracked sanding, broken stones and I have shared example pictures of and there are many more similar spots which we now have to fix next year.

5- Jorge would often overestimate what is going to be done in a certain week and then get paid for it despite all the gaps leftover which we now have to pay someone else.

6- Jorge was inconsiderate of many professional boundaries on multiple occasions including:
- Twisting the lock off my camera plug and unplugging it without permission.
- Cutting my neighbour's tree branches without permission/confirmation from either of us.
- Taking from a pile of stones we had without any permission (we had intended to gift it to him anyways and we did at the end, he claimed he is throwing it away but you don't do that when you pick and choose specific stone colours and looks.)

Throwing a fit with a customer after disrespecting them and then saying "call me back in July and I might consider to come back to finish the job", is not how business is done my friend, all the best but we are no longer surprised how small this "company" is after the supposed 20+ years of experience in this field.

We were patient and waited for your call to come finish the job, but as the season ended it became clear that is not happening and you lost a customer and get an honest fact-based review.

Barbara Edwards on Stepnstone Landscaping

We hired Jorge and his crew to re-lay our front interlock driveway (was removed for construction), rip out some asphalt, and lay sod. Not only was the work done to perfection and reasonably priced, Jorge also had amazing communication leading up to the job. Not only did he show up on time for the quote, he also texted the day before and again the day of to confirm timing. He gave me a window of dates for the job and then reached out again closer to the date to firm up the timeline. I highly recommend - not just for his high-quality work but also because of his punctuality!!!