Question For Retaining Wall Experts: Color Problems

[mjah]

Let me preface this by stating that this isn't exactly the biggest problem anyone has ever had. However, as a decent chunk of money is currently earmarked to leave my wallet and go to a contractor who might have just screwed up in my front yard, the problem feels larger than average to me.

For both drainage/soil containment reasons and cosmetic reasons, my wife and I have hired a guy to build a small (50' long, 2' tall) curved retaining wall on the front lawn of our sloped lot. The wall runs into and out of a pre-existing stone patio that is about 5 years old. Currently the new stone laying is about 2/3 complete.

As part of the request for bids, we specified that the color of the wall should be as close a match as possible to the color of the existing patio. For several reasons (weathering/sun, age, natural variations, manufacturing changes) we do not expect that the new stone will be a perfect match for the existing stone. But it should be close enough that it doesn't jump out as obviously way off. About a month ago, we stood with this contractor in our driveway and held stone samples up against the existing patio. We decided upon a stone color/texture that matched fairly well with the patio. At that time we didn't know the manufacturer of the patio stone, so we went with a reasonable match for style and good match for color.

Today, after a day of digging trenches and prepping the base of the wall, the contractor showed up with a truck full of DIFFERENT stone blocks and started laying out the wall. I was not at home at that time, but he told me that he had found the exact product (Versa-Lok) and color (he didn't specify) to match the patio. This was a deviation from our original stone selection which I had not authorized, and he never asked permission to do it, not even after the fact. But I was happy about his claim that the stone was an exact match.

Well, this afternoon after he left, I took a look at the stone in the new wall and it's a damned crappy color match. It's somewhat grayer than the color of bluestone gravel, perhaps CST's Antique Grey for those of you who might know CST, which has little to do with the blended and varying gray/brown tones of the rest of the patio. It appears that he popped out the bluest stone in the patio and took it to the local CST dealer to get it matched, which would be pretty stupid given that the patio stone color varies by stone. The proper stone to have taken would be a more "average" one, or at least one close to where the wall and patio meet. As it currently stands, it's painfully obvious that the match is crummy. I invited a neighbor over and his first reaction was "That doesn't match."

So, questions:

1. Will the color mismatch substantially go away? For instance, do pigmented stone wall (Versa-Lok) products experience very significant color fade over the first 1-2 years of exposure? In the mid-Atlantic? I'd find this hard to believe but maybe it's true.

2. Assuming the answer to (2) is "not THAT much," what are the typical options for for making things right after an unauthorized decision that turns into a screw-up? Even if I had objected the moment this guy told me about his decision to go rogue on the stone, there would still be a ton of bought-and-paid-for Versa-Lok wall blocks in my driveway, in the wrong color. Can they just take the stuff back to the dealer and swap it?

3. WTF? How common is this?

[DeanCollins]

Mjah, how far along is he with building the wall? Did your contract specify a color of "versa-lock" or did it specify another brand? My guess is that the contractor saved money buying this different block and is trying to force you to take it. I would tell him to take it back and get the blocks that you'd agreed on, period. The truck that unloaded it had a forklift with it and can reload them onto the truck that brings the correct blocks out IF the same company sells those. I'd be leaving him a voice mail right now telling him to be prepared to have them picked up tomorrow and work ceases until the correct color/brand block shows up on the job. Tell him it's not negotiable.