I am a subcontractor as I do not have a general contractor's license. I was hired by a home owner acting as his own General Contractor. He did not pull a permit for the project and a lermit Is not required by the county or city of Carver, Minnesota. He signed a proposal agreement with my DBA for installation of a concrete patio with broom finish at $10 per square foot and installation of 25 ft of landscape edging at $10 per foot, for a total of $3,750.00. $1,850 was paid upon signing the agreement. Months later, I started the project, excavating for the base and delivering the landscape edging. The project was then stalled for about a month while I completed a different project. Once resumed, I completed the base and poured the concrete. Although the patio meets all state statutes, rules and requirements but the customer did not like the broomed finish as it was slightly rough in some spots. The patio was perfect other than the surface finish, which was acceptable but not my best work. He did not agree that it was acceptable. I offered to apply a concrete topping mix to it and seal it for free just to make him happy. He refused this saying that he did not want me to do anymore work and that he was going to hire another company to remove my patio and install another one, even though the patio was not bad at all. I have pictures to prove this. All that was left of the project was to saw cut the control joints in the patio, install the plastic landscape edging and repair about 80 Square feet of sod that was slightly damaged with the skid loader, due to the drought occurring at the time resulting in the lawn being extremely dry. I was allowed to remove the forms, clean up the mess from the pour and remove all of my tools. After a couple days of civil communication back and forth, they agreed to let me finish the job, other than cutting the control joints in the patio. I had already begun work on a different project for a different customer so I couldn't do this until the following week. A couple days later they asked again when I would be able to do the work. When I stated again that it would be a couple more days before I could do it, they decided to have someone else do the work. 95% of the work involved with completing the project and fulfilling our agreement was done and I had paid all expenses. Which totalled $3,450.00 after I had purchased $600 in new tools to use on their job. At this point, they had only paid that initial $1,850. They still owed me $1,900 to satisfy the agreement. They said that they would send me a check for $700 of it only, because they thought that's all the patio was worth. I did not agree to this and they did not send me a check. Furthermore, they kept the patio I had installed and had a company cut the control joints and apply an epoxy coating to it. Considering the edging that was delivered but not installed (at the rate described in the agreement minus the cost of the edging) as well as what it would have cost me to fix the damaged sod(without including labor) I am willing to settle for $1,600 to satisfy the agreement, but have not communicated this to them yet. It has been 3 weeks since my last communication with them. I plan to send them an email, offering to settle for $1,600 and my reasons for this, along with a copy of the invoice, a copy if the agreement, a notice of intent to file a lien for the remaining amount of $1,900( which I will mail as well), and a link for them to pay the amount of $1,600 with their credit card. Is this the best next move in this situation?