Kate

Promises, promises, promises! You’ll certainly get a lot of them from the team at Renaissance, however, their low standards and poor quality workmanship nowhere near matches their over-inflated rates. Your first contact is Jason, a nice guy and very personable, and he does a great sales job claiming they are the best in the business. Unfortunately, his foremen, Vaso and Zim, and their workers fall far short of all the promises made. My reno included stucco ceiling removal, kitchen and laundry tile removal/replacement, and painting. To make things easier, I pushed out my move-in date so that my condo was completely empty. Unfortunately, the workers treated it like a job site, not with any respect for the fact that it is my home. I went in and checked on the progress each evening and was always faced with disappointment: - My appliances were not covered and were filthy with construction dust and paint splatter. Such a simple thing to do considering there was not a stick of furniture to cover and only four appliances to consider. - I left a hand towel for the workers to use in the bathroom and found the painters had cut it up into pieces and used as cleaning rags, and these wets rags were just left laying around to cause water damage on the closet shelving. In the end, I was still billed (and paid) for painting rags. - My balcony was littered with cigarette butts. - A knob was knocked off the kitchen dimmer switch and thrown out (this is the only thing that I was compensated $30 for). - They broke my fridge and it cost me $370 to repair. I was not compensated for this. When I told Jason, his response was “It was probably going to break anyway”. No it was not! In fact, the repairman told me that the part was damaged as a direct result of rough handling by the contractors. And they must have realized they broke it because they had the hose disconnected and the water supply turned off. The workmanship itself was a further disappointment. At first glance everything looked fine, until I actually moved in and found nothing but sloppy, amateurish, incomplete workmanship. TILING: - The tiling in the kitchen floor is just “okay” and there are a few uneven tiles that keep tripping me up. - They didn’t pull out the dishwasher to tile underneath so it was an absolute mess with globs of dried grout. When I pointed it out, the tiler who was installing the backsplash, cleaned out as much possible. It still looks terrible and one of the adjustable feet on the dishwasher is still buried in grout. It’s going to be a real problem for me when the dishwasher has to be serviced or eventually replaced. Zim’s excuse for the lousy workmanship was that they would have had to unhook the dishwasher. - My laundry room is directly off my kitchen and I expected the tile job to be finished properly, no different than the kitchen. It’s a mess! Where they had removed a built-in shelf and a washer/dryer platform, they just left old glue and grout on the walls and painted over it. Instead of removing the baseboard, they just slopped the grout up on it and let it harden, resulting in rough unpainted baseboards. When I requested that it be finished properly, instead of installing new baseboards, they just slapped up some mismatched baseboards or nothing at all in some places. When I told Zim it looked awful, his excuse was that he didn’t have matching baseboard in the shop. Well, wouldn’t it make sense to just replace the baseboard, especially when his tiler had ruined it with grout anyway? - The tile is travertine and needs to be sealed, but this has never been done in spite of Zim’s promise to come back and do so. I will now have to hire a professional company to replace the baseboards and finish the floor. - After the backsplash in the kitchen was completed, Zim made me go out and buy the electrical plate covers and install them myself. Something they should have done, but whatever, I just did it myself. It’s an easy task, that is, if the electrical outlets are installed properly on the tile which they were not. I had to glue in little bits of tile so that the outlet sits properly. I only zapped myself once and they still don’t sit properly. - When Sam came back to repair a corner on the backsplash, I asked if it was possible for the microwave shelf to be cut. He said he could do it, but it had to be “hush hush” because he wasn’t billing it through Renaissance. He broke the shelf when he was trying to remove it and said he would be back on the weekend to replace it. I never saw him again. PAINTING: - The painters can be summed up in three words - sloppy, sloppy, sloppy! They left paint splatter and drips on every conceivable surface; my brand new hardwood floors, mirrors, wood cabinets, trim, counter tops, tiles, light switches, door knobs, windows and the entire fireplace surround. I’ve been scraping and doing touch ups for the last 6 months. - My master bath had to be repainted because Vaso ordered the wrong colour. Luckily, I caught it after the first coat, but when they did a second coat with the right colour, they did a horrendous job. What a mess! There is paint splattered everywhere, and they didn’t even bother to cover the first coat in some places so the wrong colour shows through. - Their finishing work is sloppy too. The towel rack in my master bath just fell apart when I touched it and it was absolutely covered in paint. A lot of the outlet covers where cracked or just sitting on the light switch without being screwed in. - Vaso upsold and convinced me that my kitchen cupboards needed painting and would be more durable once he recoated them. Just a few months later, and they’re already chipping. The cabinets were removed and painted off-site and they rehung them but never adjusted them properly. My son had to show me how to adjust them so they are level and don’t hit anything when opening. I still can’t figure out how to make the drawers level again. - Some open wires were left in the living room, and I reminded Jason repeatedly that the opening had to be covered with a plate and painted. It was still not done when I moved in and Vaso disappears once he’s been paid, so I had to go out to Home Depot, buy the cover, install and paint it myself. - I just noticed recently that my kitchen has not been given a second coat. It looks awful. You can actually see the darker paint in the corners and along the top of the wall. Yet another Renaissance job I have to finish myself. If you do hire Renaissance, you have to stay on top of things so be prepared to supervise everything closely, including billing. There is no invoice for labour and the billing for materials is questionable. I requested an invoice for the $1080 I paid in material for the plaster work. The plasterer had receipts totalling $782 worth of product he purchased for my job specifically. He explained that the remaining $300 was for product they used that was left over from other jobs. On the tiling job, the labour and material was all quoted as one with no breakdown. There was a huge skid of leftover tile and grout and when I asked Zim about it he said he’ll use it on another job. My response was “Did I pay for all that?!” He did not reply. It certainly makes you wonder if clients are paying for materials that have already been paid for on previous jobs. The only proper invoicing is paint materials, for which I found about $200 in overcharges. I had several phone conversations with Jason to sort this out, each time with my credit card in hand, but he put it off and then left on vacation. Then Zim refused to do my kitchen backsplash until I paid the outstanding bill. It was so insulting! At this point, I had already paid them over $30,000 and I did not appreciate the unspoken accusation that I would not pay the rest of my bill. Here’s the topper… I hired Renaissance reliant on the Homestars rave reviews, so why was my experience so disappointing? There is one explanation - the workers were drinking on the job. Shocking, but true! As I said, my condo was completely empty, however, the previous owner had left several bottles of liquor in a kitchen cabinet. On day one of the reno, Nick, one of the plasterers, saw me moving all the liquor into a built-in cabinet in the dining room. We even joked about it. This cabinet was then covered to protect the wood during construction and I was not concerned, trusting that the workers would respect whatever few belongings I left there. When I came to check on the progress each evening, I could not figure out why the plastic covering was always torn off this cabinet and I had to repeatedly ask them to cover it. Then after smelling alcohol on one of the plasterers, it dawned on me and I found that most of the opened liquor had been consumed and a bottle of Crown Royal was actually missing. During the final walk through, Vaso had the nerve to open the liquor cabinet and ask me, “Do you want to keep this?” I was shocked! Obviously, he was aware that his workers had been helping themselves and drinking on the job. So unprofessional!! The only reason I gave Renaissance one star is for the fact that they finished the job on time. All in all, a bad experience for a company that is extremely expensive and prides themselves on being the best. They claim to be well worth the extra costs compared to other companies but, as I discovered, you are not paying for better quality work with them. What you are paying for is the fact that there are so many hands in the pie. I voiced this to one of the workers and he replied, “Oh, you just figured that out.” For me, the end result was a mediocre job that did not match the price paid. After completion, I presented each and every one of my concerns to Jason and, in all fairness, he did offer to resolve the issues. However, the problem is that the same incompetent workman will return to do the repairs. I do not trust them and will not have them back in my home, especially now that all of my furniture and belongings are here.

I used Phillips Moving & Storage to move from Barrie to Toronto. Worst move of my life!!! In spite of the fact that their representative did a full house walk through and pre-evaluation of contents to be moved, on moving day, they brought a truck that was much too small and I had to leave pieces of furniture behind. My daughter and I had both of our cars crammed full, and we still had to make the one-hour drive north the next day to pick-up our belongings that were left behind because they could not fit them on the truck. Plus, they broke several of my large decor pieces. One of the men was very unprofessional complaining about the heaving lifting and going up and down the stairs. Add to this the fact that my move was a very emotional one due to divorce, made it even worse. The move cost me over $1,700 ($400 over the quoted price) plus I paid insurance, and after sending in my complaint to the company I never heard a word. I will be moving again in the near future and will definitely not use Phillips Moving & Storage and would not recommend them to anyone.