Aim Cedar Works

I used Aim Cedar Works to install a horizontal cedar fence and to reface my front porch in the summer of 2012. I hired them through Home Depot Installation Services after obtaining quotes for each of several sections of my landscaping project.
In terms of price, they were more expensive for the fence project than some of the other vendors and the least expensive for the front porch. But I wanted to use my Home Depot card to pay so used Aim for both of these portions.
We staggered the timing a bit to accommodate other aspects of the landscaping project that were happening at around the same time. They were pretty good about this, even though it meant making more trips to our house.
The fence installation went pretty well. A City bylaw inspector complained that our fence was built too high at first, so Aim eventually took down a few of the higher planks. The supports bolted into our cement footings seem pretty solid, and I’m not terribly worried about our fence falling down like I have been with other fencing jobs I’ve had done. There are a few planks that weren’t in the best shape and that I wish they had not used (there was lots of extra material on site), but generally speaking it was a quality job.
The main exception on the fencing project was the gates they built at the entry to our backyard. Soon after installation, we found that the gate was too heavy on one side and couldn’t be opened or closed without scraping the ground or hitting the adjoining fence. Thy came back several times to tweak the design, eventually adding a wheel with springs and some tension wires along the back of the gate. It took a lot of follow up on our part and a bit of waiting, but two years later it still seems to be holding up well.
The front porch project involved removing our aluminum stair and deck railings, replacing with wood banisters and covering up our overhead cement and brick beams and support columns with a smooth wood surface. We also had them build caps for the stair posts and add some decorative trim on our support columns.
We were less impressed with the quality of work done on the front porch, although in terms of the aesthetic they were able to match what we were going for pretty much bang on. We noticed they had left chunks of the old aluminum bannister supports exposed on our stairwell rather than grinding them down or prying them off. That got fixed.
The main deficiency was the square caps they had built for us. These had a slight pitch so instead of placing a single square piece of wood for each cap, they cut four triangles that met at two sides each. Unfortunately these were never joined quite right and kept splitting apart. They’ve been by a few times (over two years) to try to rejoin them, the last time with an exceptional amount of goopy glue or caulking. They are still splitting apart and the overflowing caulking doesn’t look very nice either. Each time they come to try a repair, we have to re-​prime and re-​paint the work area within a short amount of time.
They also skipped installing any material on the section of an overhead beam that faces our front yard. We initially wondered whether this would pose a problem if critters tried to get into the newly created gap this left but were assured it wouldn’t be. Sure enough, there’s now a birds’ nest planted in the crevice above our front porch.
Aim has stopped responding to messages, so we may need to find someone else to fix their work.