LB from Mississauga

Terrible company - do not use. I called these guys to fix a leak in my fridge water valve. While the tech was there, we discussed the hook-up to the house water supply. I agreed to pay to have the old copper tube and valve replaced with a new set. Technician had to make 4 trips to Home Depot because he kept buying the wrong part. That should have been my first clue this was going in the wrong direction. He removed the old valve off of my house water pipe, He did not seem capable to install the new valve without leaking. While he was trying for the 3rd time, I went upstairs and called their office to complain and ask them to send a more experienced tech. or at least have them call him for advice. I told the tech. I did not intend to pay until the job is done properly and leak free. I said I would happily speak to his office to tell them the same thing. While I was out of the room, the technician quickly and quietly packed up his tools and took off out the door without saying a word. Leaving me with no valve installed on my open water pipe, and my main house water unable to be turned on until it was fixed. I had to call a plumber to fix it. Appliance Repair Guys are incompetent and cannot be trusted to complete event the most basic repair job.. This guy spent over 3 hours struggling to do something the plumber did correctly in less than an hour. Sad part is, before calling them I did a search on Homestars for Appliance Repair Guys and nothing came up! (Try it yourself, you will see). Now I find a bunch of negative reviews linked from an article in the Toronto Star. Fix your search engine Homestars! - I could have been spared this ordeal if your search engine had found all the negative reviews.

We selected Andros after seeing a few other kitchen design firms because we felt we had the best rapport with Anna Rentzos. Everyone has heard the horror stories about major renovations, so we proceeded cautiously. This project involved the almost total gutting of our existing kitchen. This was not a simple cabinet and countertop replacement. There was drywall work, electrical and plumbing involved. There was structural framing work involved in turning our pantry closet into an alcove to recess our new fridge, as well as widening the entry into the adjacent dining room, which required a new longer and deeper lintel beam. Given the amount of work involved, we needed to make sure that whoever we selected could handle project management for all the work - we wanted one-stop accountability to avoid the "not my problem - his problem" syndrome if things went wrong. We felt we found this with Andros. The design process took almost 2 months due to a combination of us changing our minds and Anna coming up with new ideas that we had to digest. This is where you have to put in the time - changes are much easier and less costly at this stage than if thing come up during construction that were not anticipated. Finally we signed off on the design and our project was scheduled to start in early November. True to their word, work began on November 5. Lenny (Anna's son) and Frank handled most of the demolition and construction work and there were no issues. Demo and new structural, drywall and electrical took about a month. Porcelain tile flooring came next. Flooring may be the only slightly weak point with this company – tile work was acceptable, but there were some areas where we felt that the tiles could have been raised to compensate for some un-level areas in the sub-floor – the installer just followed the sub-floor se we ended up with gaps along the bottom of baseboards in a couple of areas, and we have to install a quarter round, which we were hoping to avoid. They did do a good job with our travertine backsplash, however. The Canac cabinets were about a week late, through no fault of Andros. Finally the cabinets arrived (with pieces missing, including doors, hardware, etc) and Jerry did a fantastic job of installing them, including a lot of on-site custom work he had to do for fillers, crown mouldings, etc. We found that Jerry pays great attention to detail , which is very important at this stage. My advice about cabinets would be to ask the hard questions if you are planning on selecting from the Canac cabinet line (they do handle other lines) – we had some quality problems including missing pieces as mentioned above, as well as 6 doors that had to be replaced, which took over 2 months. The replacements are slightly darker than the originals and have to be replaced again. Canac did step up and replace them without complaining, including providing some dummy panels on our peninsula for free, so I have to give them credit for that, but this is a series of events we would have liked to avoid. Our kitchen was pretty much complete by just before Christmas, so all in all, just under 2 months of construction, which we think is quite good for the scope of the work. There are a few odds and ends of finishing work left to do, which does not prevent us from using the kitchen in any way, and these small items have proven to take a long time to get completed. But we really can’t complain since they have to schedule this small stuff in among other major projects. We are extremely happy with our kitchen and have received numerous compliments from those who have seen it. We have attached a few photos so you can judge for yourself. We would highly recommend Andros (in fact, we already have to family members). The only reason we gave them a 9 instead of a 10 is because of the tile flooring and the whole Canac problem, but really, nobody’s perfect, and we found any issues we had to deal with through the course of this project were handled professionally by Andros. We are planning a master bathroom renovation next year and will definitely return to Andros.

When considering a complete replacement of our 19 yr. old furnace, 16 yr. old A/C and 19 yr. old water heater, we contacted Airworks because of the prior successful installation of a humidifier. Tony came out when promised, gave us a competitive quote and answered most of our questions during the meeting, then a few later via email. We decided to go ahead with the installation of a new high efficiency Amana furnace and A/C unit, and a new Rinnai tankless water heater. Surprisingly they were able to do the job within 2 days after signing the contract. The crew showed up a bit late (9:45 am or so) and so ended up finishing the job around 8 pm. To their credit they stayed until all the work was completed, rather than returning the next day to complete the A/C unit, which they had said they might have to do. This was a big job to try to complete in one day, and of the 4 men who started the day, one left around 4:30 and the other one left for a few hours then came back in the evening. If they had all stayed the whole day perhaps they would have been finished earlier. The furnace works great so far - won't know about the A/C until the warmer weather, but they promised to have a tech. come right out if we have any problems. The tankless water heater takes some getting used to - with the colder incoming water temps. this time fo year (February) the flow rate is not what we expected (although it meets manufactureres specs.) It's OK for showers, etc. , but it takes about twice the time for my wife to run her bath water than before. When we called Chris Ireland, the owner, about our concerns, he promised to come out and test the system to make sure all was working as it should, which turned out to be the case. For those who are considering a tankless heater, just make sure you understand what flow rate you will be getting in winter conditions. As for the promised energy savings, we'll see when our next gas bill arrives...but we are hoping to see about 50% savings on the gas supply part of our bill.

We had Smart Roofing re-do the roof on our 19 year old house. Their price was not the lowest, but very competitive - we decided to go with them based on our impressions from our meeting with Mario, the sales rep, and also from the reviews on this site. They also offered a 10 year workmanship warranty, which many others did not. They were able to schedule the work quickly, they showed up when promised, and the work was done efficiently and with good attention to detail.

We've had GTA windows do 2 projects for us - the first was replacing 15 windows throughout our house, then a few years later we had them replace our sliding patio doors. From the initial sales call to the final cleanup, GTA were professional, prompt and courteous. Their window products certainly are on a par with anyone else out there, and their attention to detail ensures that the job will go well from start to finish. The window job was done 5 years ago, the patio doors 2 years ago. We have expreienced zero problems. I have recommended GTA to friends and co-workers and they have received the same quality work.