At Gino’s Concrete in Denver, the work that matters is under the driveway
Gino Martinez has poured Denver driveways, patios and steps since at least 2014, and his customers keep describing the part they will never see again: the ground underneath.
Denver, CO
The driver who brought the concrete noticed the small things. Leon G. hauled loads to Gino Martinez’s jobs for a trucking company, and he wrote down what he saw. Martinez set out safety cones so the truck had a place to park. He moved the wet concrete across the yard in a concrete buggy, not wheelbarrows. He laid plywood to make a path so the grass and plantings would not be torn up, and he hung plastic on the walls next to the pour so nothing would splatter the house.
Customers point out something else. His name is on the business and on the truck, one wrote in a Google review, and he is the one who shows up to pour, finish and clean up the job.
Martinez runs Gino’s Concrete in Denver. He first registered the company with the state in 2014. It pours driveways, patios, porches, steps, sidewalks, garage slabs and retaining walls across the metro area, from Arvada and Westminster in the north to Littleton, Highlands Ranch and Parker in the south.
What his customers describe most is the part of the job that ends up buried.
Martinez told one homeowner that the most important factor in a driveway that lasts is the prep work underneath it. The homeowner could see the crew was not cutting corners there. The job took a little longer than other driveway replacements in the neighborhood, which the customer did not mind.
Another customer watched the crew spend days compacting the ground under a large driveway before anything was poured. They laid steel mesh, added rebar where it was needed and cut the control joints with a saw. When he wrote about it, the driveway had not cracked.
Old concrete hides things. On a front patio and sidewalk replacement, the crew found within the first hour that the slab coming out was deeper than anyone had known when the job was bid. The homeowner wrote that Martinez worked out a fix on the spot and kept the job moving. After the pour, he came back to make sure the new concrete was protected from the cold.
Water is the other thing he watches. One customer singled out his knowledge of leveling and runoff. Another needed only a short section of sidewalk. Martinez matched it to the height of the old walk, still raised it above the grass and sloped it so water would run away from the house. In his reply to the review, he thanked the customer for hiring him to fix the water problem at the sidewalk.
The days can run long. When he poured a new porch and steps for one homeowner, Martinez stayed until 9 p.m. with a headlamp on to get every finish right, the homeowner wrote, and he did not ask for more money when parts of the job took longer than planned. On a driveway job, he and his crew worked through heat in the high 90s and still took care with the neighbors’ flowers growing beside it. One man spent many weeks working with Martinez on his driveway and steps, long enough that his daughter started asking when Gino was coming over.
Customers also describe him reshaping their plans. He suggested one family enlarge their driveway and change its shape. He came up with a better layout for another customer’s new dining area, and he offered advice that improved a homeowner’s plan for replacing an old deck with a concrete pad. A customer who has hired the crew twice wrote that the second job was as good as the first.
The crew is small, and the names in the reviews change over the years: Pancho on driveways, Louie on a patio extension, Ricky on a set of garage steps. One customer singled out Jose, the hardest-working man over 70 he said he had ever met. The work is not all driveways, either. The crew has hauled off old concrete debris, built a pool deck, poured pads for trash cans, and taken a hot tub out of a family’s great room, then resurfaced the floor for new flooring while keeping the dust contained.
People who know concrete hire him too. A man who once worked in concrete brought the company in to build the deck around his swimming pool and wrote that the crew takes pride in its forming and rebar. A civil engineer who designs concrete structures hired Martinez to replace the single step between his garage and his house with two. Martinez suggested 14-inch treads instead of 12-inch ones for a safer step, and he set rebar in the new steps where the old one had none. The engineer wrote that he knows great concrete work when he sees it, and that Gino did that kind of work on his two steps. Martinez replied that he could now step into his garage with confidence.
His own replies to reviews mostly run a sentence or two and stay on the job. He told one customer that it always makes him feel good to know a homeowner is happy with how the new driveway looks.
The real test of the buried work is time. One woman had Martinez pour a 40-foot driveway, a job that first meant clearing out several stumps. Three years later, she wrote, it still looked fantastic.