AGM Renovations

We went through The Basement Finishing Company (aka AGM Basements). Worked with their internal designer (Svetlana who is great). Agreed to have them work Saturdays and come in anytime between a 7 am to 7 pm window. Project was set to start Oct 13th, but folks came in on the 12th to inspect and repair foundation cracks in the basement. All materials arrived the 13th and work started at a very good pace. The one-man show framer was excellent and very efficient. Separate teams who did the taping and electrical were good too. Tiling guy was fast and efficient. Flooring guy did good work and finished most of the basement, but then disappeared for a bit. He came back a week later to finish. Painters were ok and came in on a Sunday which was a surprise. All of the above (or what they define as “Substantial Work”) was contracted to be completed in 26 business days (they don’t include the Saturdays in their count even though they came in those days to do work) so that would have brought us to around Nov 17/18. Five extra business days were added for custom upgrades (with that, expected end date would be Nov 25th). Garbage was picked up once a week throughout this period.

After Nov 18th is when things started to get weird. Finally introduced to the Project Manager and did the walk through recording a list of 20+ deficiencies (ie. missing toilet, missing faucets/fixtures in bathroom, missing cold air vents etc). A couple arrived the evening of the 18th at 8 pm to finally install cabinets and worked till about 10 pm. So knocked one off the deficiency list. Then dead silence from them with no one showing up for days. Reached out to Customer Service (Maria, who is awesome by the way and is really on your side whenever you have issues), but unfortunately still had ‘no shows’. Tried to contact the Project Manager and whenever he responded after a couple of days, he would give us future dates of completion, but instead were dates of further ‘no shows’. We find out from Customer Service that our project was mistakenly recorded as ‘Complete’ on Nov 29th, therefore they re-directed the contractors to other job sites. The cabinet guy finally comes back in early Dec at 7 pm to install shelves (on our deficient list) but left them unleveled. Rationalized that this is allowed within a builders’ margin of error. Stuck a paint can on one of the shelves and was happy to show me that it didn’t slide off, but visually it was leaning forward. Not accepting this, I travelled to Home Depot to buy washers to add behind the shelf brackets and leveled them myself. More days of “no shows” and no responses to my “reach outs”. After multiple days of neglect, a Handyman finally shows up to knock off more items on the deficient list. Then we were back to normal of more days of “no shows” and “no responses”. The plumbers finally make their appearance on Dec 7th to install the bathroom toilet and faucets. With a smaller list of unfinished items, I now had a choice to either accept more days of neglect and prolong the project completion date even further out or just finish the stuff myself (seal all gaps and spaces between the drywall and windows, finish horrible looking plaster issues around the stairs, seal gaps around the shower floor, cut/install/paint base boards underneath vanity cabinets that was left unfinished, caulk areas that required it, etc. I just wanted this all to end so got instructions from guys at Home Depot and did the rest myself. By the way, during this period they also stopped picking up their garbage.

So after a bunch of fits and starts, I can say that the basement work was finally completed December 11th (which include the time of my repairs and no one from AGM has returned since Dec 7th). I’m writing this review on December 23nd and they still haven’t picked up their garbage. Maybe we were the suckers who got the short end of the stick so that others could get their basements finished within AGM’s/The Basement Finishing Company’s advertised 3 weeks.

Obviously past reviews have been positive (gave us the confidence to hire them). I’m hoping our complaints to AGM/The Basement Finishing Company will help them improve whatever they need to, in order for future clients to have a better experience. Unfortunately our overall basement finishing experience was not a positive one and would not wish what we went through upon anyone, therefore AGM/Basement Finishing Company are not a company we would recommend.