Christian and Sheila

Sheila and I have been almost “living with you” for the past 4 months and what could have been a very painful experience (a huge renovation…the issues and stress that brings) has turned into a great relationship building journey.

When we started planning for our large triplex renovation in High Park: almost gutting a 2 ½ storey home + basement, all new plumbing, knob and tube electrical and hot water heating systems into code compliant new systems, and still keep the character of our century old house, we could not foresee all the challenges ahead of us and that’s where the “almost too good to be true story” comes into play.
What do we mean by that?
When we interviewed contractors last summer, we, like many other people, were fully aware of all the horror stories about contractors: starting and going to another job, not on time, never on budget, or the “fly by night” category, etc… and Sheila being an architect, we knew that our contractor’s choice would be critical in building our new nest the way we wanted it to reunite our lives under a new and common roof. We gave you and the other potential builders the same brief and waited for your proposal.
Your initial pitch to us was really too much: “it can be done on time and on budget, I offer a lifetime warranty, I do not add a mark-up on materials or trades I use (you pay them or I do and show you their invoices), you do not pay me upfront but as we go, based on my costs, I just take a % for my work, no surprises…”  when you left Sheila told me the old story we all know: “if it is too good to be true…it cannot be!”
As you came to us highly recommended, we invited you back to bid with more precise estimates (timelines, trades quotes, materials, etc…) based on our precise scope of work, engineer drawings and you confirmed that it could be done. You then spontaneously called a number of your past customers out of the blue and pushed the speaker phone button on your Blackberry for us to ask them about their experience with Premier Quality Renovation. All of them were extremely positive about not only what you had done for them but also about you, the person you are, the way you work, the quality and cleanliness of your crew and trades. We were quite puzzled about it at that point and you became the lead contender in our search for our contractor. You then invited us to visit a couple of your previous jobs and we could then see for ourselves not only the quality of the work you had done but also the quality of the relationship you had with your clients, even after they went through the tough times that a renovation creates. That did it for us and it did not take us long to decide to see if the “too good to be true” could become truth for us.
It is now 4 months later and despite the numerous challenges we faced, we moved in at the exact date we had set  at the beginning of our our contract (even if your word has been the main contract we had all along, as the original one went through so many changes) and our project has become a reality!
We did manage all the challenges and discussed them as they came and always found solutions together. If we had to increase our budget to build what we wanted, we do realize that we did far more than we thought at the beginning but you still managed to get it done on time, even if it meant increasing the size of the crew, extending their working hours and finding new trades…you made it happen!
It was good and it was true!
Many thanks Peter, to you and your team for building our nest the way we wanted it and for making this very stressful process livable, with your personality and professionalism. Merci beaucoup!
Please feel free to use us as a reference, we will be pleased to share our experience and will make also sure that people know about who (and how) we did it together. You will always be welcome in our home for a visit and a drink.
All the best.
Regards, Christian & Sheila