Masonry Reviews

I am Joe's son, Danny, I lay brick beside him and I answer for him in print because he will not sit down long enough. Dad is 63, his knees sound like gravel in a bucket, and he has bid jobs from memory his whole life. Walk the wall, point at things, give a number. Nothing written anywhere a person could find it later. Last spring he bid a repointing job on a big brick house, beautiful old work, and we never heard a word. He shrugged it off the way he shrugs everything off. In October the follow up from Launchbarr went out and the lady answered the same day. Her husband had been in the hospital all summer. She had kept the number because dad had been kind at the door, she said that too. We did that job in November with tarps and heaters and it carried the crew into winter. Dad told her at the end, I almost did not call you back either, ma'am. She laughed. She thought he was joking.

Ray and I own this outfit together. He lays stone the way his father taught him. I run estimates and keep the schedule from eating us alive. For years I watched Ray burn Saturdays at kitchen tables explaining drainage to homeowners who had already picked the cheaper wall in their heads. The cheap wall went in two streets over one spring. It leaned by the next spring. They all lean when there is nothing under them. People who call us now have usually been on the website Launchbarr made us first, looking at finished stonework, and the first question has changed. A man from two towns over asked Ray what we put under the wall before he asked what it cost. Ray came back to the truck grinning like he had won money. Maybe he had. We still lose bids, same as anybody. We just lose fewer of them to a number with nothing holding it up.

I do not ask people for reviews. I lay the work, I point at the joints, I go home. Felt wrong, asking a man to grade me on the internet like a hotel. The asks go out through Launchbarr now and folks answer them. A builder I do fireplaces for said a customer read one out loud to him, about my crew tarping a lady's floors and sweeping her porch like it was ours. That was Caleb, doing what I taught him without me standing there. I read that one at my kitchen table and sat there a minute.

Every mason I know has the same problem and it is not work. It is hands. My lead man is 59. Behind him was a kid who lasted four days in August heat and a phone that never rang with anybody better. I told my wife in September, if Ray retires I am a very expensive helper with a truck, because I cannot be the crew and the business both. What changed is the work got steadier in the months that used to be dead. The Google page Launchbarr sorted out for us started bringing in chimneys and repointing and repair work all winter, the kind of jobs I used to beg builders for, and I could finally promise an apprentice real hours in January instead of maybe. I hired a 24 year old in December. He is green and he shows up, which in this trade is most of the battle. Ray watched him lay his first lead the other day and said, slow down, son, the count is not the job. I have been waiting fifteen years to hear Ray say a thing like that out loud.

Forty one years laying block and my phone lived in the truck, because a man on a scaffold with mortar on both hands answers nothing. The voice Launchbarr set up answers now, takes the details, books the look. A customer told me the girl on the phone was the reason he waited for me instead of calling the next name.

I am a third generation mason and I still lay stone most days, which means estimates happen after supper. I missed calls for years and figured the serious people would call back. Most did not, and they were usually the big patio jobs. Now the second I miss a call, a text goes out from Launchbarr with my name on it, asking what they are building. A man answered at nine at night with photos of a crumbling retaining wall and measurements he paced off himself. I quoted it the next morning and we built it in June.

My partner Frank runs the crews and I run everything with a keyboard, which for years meant doing estimate math on the dash of my truck while the office, which was also me, fell behind. Homeowners would text our number, message the website, send pictures of spalling brick, and I would find half of it a week later. Launchbarr pointed all of that at one place. The system asks what a caller is actually dealing with, chimney, wall, steps, how bad, how long, and books a real visit with the answers already attached. Frank walked onto a job where the homeowner had sent nine photos through that conversation and knew the mortar color argument was settled before he got out of the truck. I still do math in the truck. Old habit. But I do it on jobs already booked instead of on people I was about to lose.

Texts on my phone, messages on Facebook, emails I checked on Sundays, a notebook in the visor. That was my office for twenty years and things fell through it regular. Everything lands in one spot now through Launchbarr, every call and message in one line I can read with my coffee. My wife asked what I was doing home at six. I said reading my mail, all of it, in ten minutes.

My husband Frank has laid brick for thirty years and he is a perfectionist about one thing, his joints. He will tear out a course he does not like and eat the time, and he has never once asked a soul for a review, because in his mind good work is its own advertisement and asking is bragging wearing a hat. The problem was the only people talking about Frank online were the ones who had hired the cheap repointing crew first and called us to fix it, scared and mad, and those stories stuck to our name. I watched him come home quiet over things strangers wrote that were not even about his work. Shortly after we hired Launchbarr, the ask started going out on its own after every finished job, polite, no begging, just a link while the work was still fresh. Reviews started coming in that sounded like our actual life. One lady wrote about Frank tarping her garden beds before he repointed her chimney, and raking the beds after. Frank still will not ask. He has stopped needing to. Last week he read one out loud at our table about his joints, then pretended he had something in his eye. Turns out the work just needed a microphone after he went home.

I never answered reviews. A man lays brick all day, he does not come home and type thank you notes to the internet. The answers go out now without me, and they sound like a person, naming the job and the detail. A customer mentioned it when he called about a second wall. Said our reply to his neighbor is why he chose us.

I am third generation. My grandfather's name is the company, my dad runs the crews, and I handle the phones he throws across the shop. Our Google page had one blurry photo and the wrong phone number for two years. Launchbarr fixed the whole thing, every service we actually do, real pictures of our work. Now builders find us searching for repointing in the winter, which never happened before. Dad says the phone rings like it is spring all year. He still throws his own phone. It is tradition at this point.

For years we existed online as three different companies. One listing had an address from a shop we left in 2009. One had my husband's cell number, which he answers like it owes him money. One had us doing concrete work, which we refer out and always have. Launchbarr matched us up everywhere, same name, same number, same list of what we actually lay. The calls changed character. People now call already knowing we do restoration work. A lady told me she picked us because everywhere she looked, we were the same company. She said that like it was rare. In this trade, maybe it is.

I run the office for a masonry outfit, which for twenty years meant a desk in a room that also held the Christmas decorations and a space heater with opinions. My boss is a fine mason and a terrible advertiser. Our old site had stock photos of stone walls nobody here built, in front of mountains nobody here has seen. When Launchbarr rebuilt it with our real work, the calls changed. Homeowners reference specific jobs now. That arch. That outdoor fireplace. People apologize less for asking questions, because they have already seen the proof. An older man called about tuckpointing and said, your website is the first one I believed, because the houses look like houses on my street. I made coffee that morning feeling like the office had finally grown a front door.

I am an old school mason. My website was one page my nephew made in an afternoon and it said call for estimate, which is a complete sentence and was, I thought, enough. Launchbarr built pages for the actual work, chimneys on one, stone veneer on another, foundation repair on its own, so a man searching his exact problem lands on his exact problem with my name under it. The calls come in educated now. A woman needing her steps rebuilt told me, I already read your page twice, just tell me when. I am not used to being pre sold by homework I never assigned.

My wife owns this company and lays a straighter wall than I ever did. I do the books and the estimates. Her calendar used to be a paper planner that got rained on twice. Now folks book the estimate visit themselves online, and she just arrives where the system says. She told a customer she feels famous. Her name is spelled right and everything.

Half my reviews used to be about the job before the job. Man never showed when he said. Man showed and the homeowner was at the store. I am punctual to a fault. It was the homeowner half of that sentence I could not control. Reminders go out now on their own before a visit, and an on my way text goes when I am actually rolling. The no shows fell off a cliff. A retired teacher met me at the gate with it already open and her questions in a notebook. She said, you communicate like a dentist, and I choose to take that as the compliment it was.

I lead a crew for a man I have worked for nineteen years, so understand I do not pick software. But I watch driveways. A number written at a kitchen table three days later loses to a number sent the same evening, every time. Estimates go out by text now the same day we measure, while the homeowner is still standing in the yard looking at the wall. My boss asked what changed. I told him we finally bid at the speed of the conversation.

Sal and I bought this company off his uncle, which means the good trowels and a drawer of estimates the old man wrote and never chased came with it. Sal lays, I chase. Except an estimate has a half life of about four days, and by the time I called back, the homeowner had a cheaper wall already growing in his yard. Launchbarr set the follow ups to go out on their own, a few spaced messages, easy tone, no desperation. I started getting replies to estimates I had emotionally buried. An older couple answered on the third message about a stone mailbox column. The first two caught them at the hospital. The third caught them ready. That job paid for a new mixer. Sal asked if the computer would lay brick next. I told him no, but it might bury him in work he already did once.

I will tell you the exact moment I stopped dreading spring. Every March the phone would start with people who wanted a patio or a wall, and every March I would drive out, measure, price stone, and then wait weeks while they thought about it, during which three other masons measured the same yard and my numbers got shopped like a grocery list. This year Launchbarr had me sending the estimate with a deposit link attached, and I want to be honest, I argued against it. Asking for money before a handshake felt pushy to a woman raised the way I was raised. My oldest customer talked me into trying it on her job first, said Grace, everybody pays deposits on their phone now, you are the only one making me find a checkbook. She paid it in the driveway. On her phone. While I was still coiling my tape. The job got scheduled before I got home, and the stone got ordered without me floating it. By May I had stopped floating material entirely, which at my age is not a small thing, it is the whole ballgame. Two other masons can measure a yard now. The yard already has my name on it and a deposit holding its place in line.

My husband offers a yearly look over for past chimney customers, crown, flashing, joints, before winter. The billing used to be me and a shoebox in January. The plan money comes in now month by month, and the visits get booked off the list. He said the shoebox had seniority over me. The shoebox is retired. I am not.

Paperwork is where masonry goes to die. I am a good mason and a bad secretary, and the gap between those two men cost me jobs I had already won, because the contract sat in my truck waiting for a signature while the homeowner's brother in law knew a guy. The papers go to the customer's phone now and they sign them sitting at their own table. I get the signed copy back before my coffee cools. A builder I work for asked if I hired an office manager. I told him I hired the opposite. I got rid of the office and kept the manager part.

I am the daughter, the one who went to college for business and came home to a company run on a whiteboard and my father's memory, which is excellent for mortar ratios and terrible for who called Tuesday. Every lead and job sits on one board now through Launchbarr. Dad resisted for a month. Then a customer asked about his estimate from three weeks prior and Dad watched me pull it up in four seconds. He said, the whiteboard never did that. The whiteboard has been demoted to grocery lists.

I answer the phones and keep the schedule for two masons who would schedule a chimney rebuild and a patio on the same Tuesday if the voices in their heads had their way. The system tells me who needs a call back, whose deposit is missing, whose material is not confirmed, every morning in a list I did not have to build from sticky notes. My boss asked how I got so organized all of a sudden. I have been organized for six years. I just finally have a list that admits it.

Marco and I are partners, not related, though people assume. He is the face, I am the calendar, and for years the calendar lost, because posting our finished work anywhere required Marco to take a photo, send it to me, and me to remember, three miracles in a row. The posts go out on their own now through Launchbarr. A finished stone wall, an arch, a fireplace, with Marco never touching his phone, which stays in a bucket of water half the time anyway. A homeowner two towns over called about a retaining wall and opened with, I have watched your work all spring on my phone. She had never driven past a single job. Marco said the walls started traveling without permits. He is not wrong.