EFTA02106865.pdf

To: From: Sent Tue 4/29/2014 10:54:35 AM Subject: Re: Quote I love this answer! Pm sure Tom is doing his best to get this business! I have total confidence in you Bob. I like what we are discussing. On Apr 29, 2014, at 6:35 AM, "Robert" wrote: Yep. And they hate to see small brown people show up and do the work and whitey with the polo shirt comes in for the check. After he spent 2 years planning and building the place. You come and want to make 50,000 dollars in a week. Puts builders off. I landscaped your last house. I landscaped most of my projects. My partner owns a landscaping company. From: [milt° Sent: Monday, April 28, 2014 7:06 PM To: Bob Caffrey Subject: Fwd: la Quote Please read below. .. You have done landscaping before right? Sent from my iPhonc Begin forwarded message: From: Thomas Costello Date: April 28, 2014, 2:27:01 PM EDT To: Subject: Re: 'Quote I'm sorry about your voice! Not being able to talk does make things more difficult. I completely understand you wanting to cut costs a bit. I've yet to meet a construction project that didn't go over budget somewhere. Since you've been a really great customer over the years, I just wanted warn you about something I run into a lot. I've dealt with many builders over the years and many new construction homes. A majority of them prefer to add in the landscaping because the more work they do the more money they make. Unfortunately, they rarely do it properly. Usually builders buy the cheapest possible materials, don't put down enough top soil, don't put down adequate compost to provide nutrients for plantings, fail to install plantings to proper EFTA_R1_00723210 EFTA02106865  depth and many more landscaping no-no's. While I can usually work wonders, if your builder doesn't install the lawn properly and it fails, the only real fix is to scrap the existing lawn, layer the proper amount of top soil and start over. It's more expensive than just doing it right the first time. While I realize it seems like just grass and a few bushes, there is a lot of science that goes into plant placement and creating the environment where you are able to grow a healthy lawn. While I, again, completely understand wanting to save some money, I would highly recommend you discuss with your builder his methods and experience with plantings. I'd also suggest you'd see if he can refer other customers who he's done lawns for and see how they are doing a year or two later. I'd hate the work of other bad builders tarnish your builders name, but in my experience they usually don't have any idea what they're doing when it comes to landscaping so it's worth discussing. I'd also ask if he'd guarantee your plants and/or lawn for a year so if they do fail you have recourse. Also, if you are considering doing anything resembling my design in the coming years, please communicate that to whoever is doing your irrigation system. If they install it based on the initial landscaping, it may not be adequate for your future needs. Adding to a system is expensive and requires digging up your lawn! Lastly, if you'd be at all interested, I am happy to do part of the estimate instead of the entire thing. If you wanted me to start with say just some basic pans of the foundation plantings and installing the lawn, I'd be happy to do that just to get you started. We can always add on more later when you're ready. If you'd like a revised quote for say just the lawn install or just a few foundation plantings, please let me know. Best of luck to you and have a great day! Again, absolutely no hard feelings if you decide to go with the builder. Just warning you ahead of time the troubles I've seen many others come up against. Tom On Sat, Apr 26, 2014 at 1:17 PM, wrote: rit totthank you so much for the time and effort you put into our quote...but at this time we are going to go with just the basics and our builder wants to handle it himself...We have been over budget since we started this project and he is trying to save us some EFTA_R1_00723211 EFTA02106866  money by seeding and installing a few bushes. In the future (next year) we will want to revisit all of this...you have been tremendous and we will of course come back to you...I will save your drawing and quote. We will also have you quote maintenance on the new property once there is something to maintain! I would call you but I am sick and completely lost my voice! It's terrible not being able to speak! Our current yard looks very nice. Thank you for the recent spring clean up! I'm sure I will be speaking with you soon. Thomas J. Costello Landscaping LLC P.O. Box 17304 Stamford. CT 06907 EFTA_R1_00723212 EFTA02106867