Doing It Right the First Time: Landscaping Failures ... and Expenses!

A mistake often made when looking for any kind of contracted work is to focus too much on the up-front costs. To be clear, it’s not a mistake to focus on costs but to focus too much on up-front costs at the expense (see what we did there?) of the total cost over the lifetime of the contracted work. All kinds of landscaping failures and expenses may result, and those expenses may hit far sooner than you'd think.

Since we’re talking landscapes and outdoor living spaces, think about the lifetime cost of your patio or retaining wall, for instance. How long will they last? What if you could install a beautiful patio or retaining wall that you’d never have to replace? What would that be worth long-term? What would that be worth in today’s dollars compared to the cost of repair or replacement ten or twenty years from now?

That’s why at Serenity we focus on quality the first time. Cutting corners to save money in the short term will only cause costly problems later on. Every time. Problems that will either cost more money to repair than if done right the first time or that will alter and damage your overall outdoor living area, reducing the quality of your time outdoors as erosion, broken materials, and the like intrude on your space. Yes, you could put up with that when (not if) it happens, but why take on that cost and worry?

That’s why it’s important to choose a trusted professional to do it right the first time. Someone who will steer you in the right direction and not sugar-coat the long-term effects of cutting corners on building materials, of reducing the necessary extent of a job like a French drain, or of work done poorly on a retaining wall, dooming it to fail. We see this all the time on jobs where, for example, timbers are used as retaining walls in a situation where only brick or stone with an adequate amount of stone backfill will be adequate long term. On jobs where concrete patios not even ten years old have cracked and buckled and are pooling water. On downspouts and drains installed incorrectly, causing water to pool and erosion to accelerate.

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That’s why we recommend to look at the overall lifetime cost of larger items like your patio, retaining wall, or drainage system, and we definitely recommend looking at this cost the first time around rather than almost guaranteeing the need for repair or even replacement within ten years or even less.

And that’s why it’s important to choose a professional contractor who can and will tell you honestly the long-term effects of the choices you need to make on a large job like a retaining wall. The kind of professional who will refuse to do work that they know will be inadequate in the long run.

So what should you look for when getting quotes and designs for improving your outdoor living spaces? Obviously, make sure what the warranty terms are going to be on the most costly components. Do your homework to find a contractor with a reputation for paying attention to little details and standing behind their work. And while interacting with a potential contractor, ask plenty of questions to find out if they will tell you the truth about the long-term effects of this or that choice of material, of decisions around the extent of work to be completed, and the kinds of cost-cutting measures they will or will not recommend and why.

As always, reach out with specific questions about your outdoor living needs. While we don’t bite, we do take pride in our work at every step! We won’t steer you wrong…

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