Reno-addict in Markham

So my not quite ancient, high efficiency water heater went down. No problem, I called Max, he fixed it the same day AND I had him check my furnace for good measure. Another problem free winter ahead. I am so grateful to have someone like Max available, he makes a big difference!

For about a year we had a scarred up section of a house where a rotted out external retaining wall had to be removed. To make matters worse, the cinder block replacement looked terrible. Enter Brian, whom we found on Homestars. He made several excellent recommendations, replaced the damaged bricks with almost an exact match and addressed the retaining wall issue by veneering in slate. It looks GREAT and passed Brian's just try and pull that slate off test. Thanks Brian!

Strong Plumbing responded quickly to me regarding an initial job that 2 other plumbers could not deal with adequately, through Homestars. I accepted his offer and Valentin showed up the next day to deal with the issue. I had 2 additional issues and Valentin dealt with those on another vist, about a week afterwards. 3 problems up, 3 problems I don't need to worry about again and handled affordably too! Thanks Valentin and Strong Plumbing!!!

Max has been handling our HVAC system for some time now. Every year he shows up, makes sure everything is in order, changes the filter and so we never have any problems. When we had a problem recently, due to an issue with the system itself, Max was at our home immediately to address the issue quickly and efficiently,. We are grateful he is there! Recently, my father had an issue with his heating system. This is a bigger issue as he is quite old and frail. Max came the same day to diagnose the issue (with a rental unit) and put us on a path to repairing it. If you want expertise, honesty and super-reliable service - all at reasonable rates, call Air Max!

Sande showed up when he said he would, was prepared, walked me through his plan and got straight to work. He cleared out the nest that was being built in behind my squirrel wire, repaired the entrances (and a couple of additional risky areas) and installed a one-way door so that any squirrels trapped inside could get out. Thanks Sande, nice job! Note: No animals were harmed in any way in the completion of this review!

It was a real pleasure to have Geoff and his team here to expertly plant our new hedge of 10' cedars. Geoff clearly takes a lot of care in the quality of work and puts a lot of time into preparation. He also took the time to walk me through everything, how the project would go and how to care for it afterwards to get the most out of it. Add to that, his foray with me over to another of our hedges and his welcome and expert direction there. Ultimately, Cedar Ontario was well worth it and I am really happy to have made such a good decision!!!

After navigating what seems to be a maze of duct cleaners, we settled on Green and Spotless and they did not disappoint. Shane showed up on time, was very personable and got on with the job. It was clear that he was taking care with what he did and he stayed quite a bit longer that we expected to clean the entire duct system in our house. We notice the difference! Thanks Green and Spotless.

Back to install a short pathway that ties into our original front walls project from years ago, as well as do some warranty work to rel-level a couple of steps that sank (it was installed where we had to perform some waterproofing). The usual great job, pleasant service AND they honor their warranty commitments. Thanks Jeremy, Ofer and John - again!

Max to the rescue again! So apparently our PCB controller board for our AC failed, Max got in to see us quickly to diagnose it and returned to replace the part the next day. It is amazing to have someone you know you can count on like Max!!!!

I had worked with John and Mark on a previous project and brought them back for a problem with a leak into our garage which actually sits underneath our house. They got to work quickly, excavating in a difficult area, by hand and removing all of the stone steps, cleaning off the glue so that it could be re-used easily by my landscapers. Everything turned out great, we are waterproof once more and the landscape repair was significantly less expensive because Family Waterproofing did a great job making sure everything was ready for them. The worksite was kept clean and the whole project was headache free. Thanks guys!

I brought in SafeTech several years ago to handle our office alarm system which they did very competently. It made good sense for us to have them come in and take care of our home system as well. A competent, efficient job by a very courteous and reliable company. Thanks to Brant and SafeTech!

This is the second time Jeremy and Ofer have come through for us. They installed a 1,200 sqft patio/pool surround in our backyard, transforming it from what we used to laughing refer to as a nuclear cooling pond into Shangri-La. This project was actually a couple of years in the making as we dithered about design and what to do with such a large area. Taylor was really patient with us and re-worked the design a few times to our needs. When the time came to build it, the crew was every bit as great as the first one that did our massive retaining wall, driveway and front stairs. The level of quality was for sure there and when we had to have a subterranean issue with the pool pipes addressed, the person that came to do it was impressed at how deep the actual work went below grade. Land-Con coordinated seamlessly with our sprinkler team, helping them make any adjustments or additions that were needed. They even installed conduit channels under everything so we could add a firepit and connect our BBQ with no visible lines. Another awesome job by Land-Con! I will get some photos up soon!!!

Thank you Max! Our A/C system was down after a very poor installation by what appears to be a fly by nighter at this point. Enter Max. He fixed numerous freon leaks, identified a drainage issue (they had not installed one), saw that our breakers had been flipped around to prevent us from starting it, and got everything running perfectly again. Unexpectedly, I felt for the amount of work he did, he charged us very reasonably. I am really grateful that he got everything done quickly and efficiently and am relieved that he will be handling our HVAC going forward, after a couple of not so great experiences elsewhere.

Mark and Tommy did an amazing job replacing the soffit and trim on 2 bay windows, over our balcony/front porch and some of the trim on the roof. All of it was old and was installed with little thought to how it looked. Now the house looks great, very pleased with a job that was 100% on time and on budget. Totally lived up to and exceeded my expectations, really happy I went local with this job. Thanks Edmunds!

This company does not appear to exist anymore, which is just as well as we just had to have another contractor come in and fix a completely botched air conditioner portion of a full HVAC replacement. Very disappointed.

What can I say, Larry returned our call quickly, showed up the next day and found the leak quickly with what looked like fairly specialized listening equipment. Within a week, he was back, lifted a very limited area of our patio (maybe 4 stones), fixed the leak securely (it was almost exactly where he said it was) and replaced the patio stones almost perfectly. I will also add that I really like a contractor that communicates. He kept us posted on when he was going to be here to fix our pool, came when he said and let us know that because of some rain on repair day, he would be a little late (45 minutes, can't really complain). Thanks Larry, you did a great job!!!

I hired Room at a Time from Homestars. Initially everything was great, they came in and did a great job on our kitchen, which was half the work, They had started doing some minor plaster work in preparation for our ceiling, then they stopped showing up completely. I reached out a couple of times to see what was going on, but no response. I heard through one of my other contractors who was doing work in the house that they had run into some staff issues, so I offered to be flexible on the timing of the job, but it did not really help. Anyway, this was disappointing and I will chalk it up to them having some internal issues, but it was unfortunate that he never got back to me when I did try to follow up. EDIT/ Just noticed this response and wanted to add that: - I contacted you at least twice by e-mail, and additional attempts by phone, to no response after you decided to vanish - We had discussed the extra work at length and I was quite willing to compensate for the additional time - The plastering was not sanded and not finished, also not done properly, as it corners require tape - Pretty disappointed that you would post my name in a masked site, inappropriate Lesson learned: I will make sure to hire Homestars contractors whose ratings are driven mostly by reviewers with more than 1 review in future.

You have to really appreciate a company that not only does a good job on the regular things, but shows up to help when something out of their control goes wrong. I met Oak Ridge Electrical as part of a kitchen renovation that we did. They were consistently on time and made of point of doing quick, accurate work. As a result, I had them back to install the electrical part of a heated floor we put into a bathroom on a separate job. Somewhere after that, we had a situation where one of the lines from the street burned out. We had no idea what was going on, half of our electrical utilities were dead. Craig himself was at our home within an hour, reviewed and identified the problem quickly and effectively and within another half an hour or se, the electrical company was at our house getting power running normally again. Oh, and he did not even charge for the visit. I am grateful that there are contractors like these out there!

Jaimie and his team showed up as planned and got our system (which is not small) running after we performed massive landscaping work. They really went out of their way to get it right, coming back twice to adjust sprinklers after we planted in the landscaped area and the 'lay of the land' changed. We were only too happy to have them handle the opening/closing activities each year. We feel lucky to have found Northern Rainmakers.

Could not be happier. They came on the day specified and did an excellent replacement of my 2 garage doors, then their trim guy came about a week later and capped the door frame in aluminum beautifully, even cutting the trim into the brick. Excellent work and our doors look amazing. Thank you Markham Garage Doors.

Land-Con really came through for us, as we had just bought a new house that required significant landscaping (900 square face feet of retaining wall and a 1,700 sqft driveway). Initially, we got proposals from 8 different companies of varying size, including Land Con. Their proposal was not the least, but it was far from the most expensive. We chose them based on the level of detail they provided in their proposal, their willingness to work with us, their credentials (They actually have certification for retaining wall construction) and their 5 year warranty on all work. They started very quickly after we came to terms. They were literally at work by 7:30am, every morning of the project and, barring bad weather, generally kept going until 7pm. They went to extremes to keep our neighbors happy, including doing an excellent tidy up after work each and every day. All in all, it was really one of, if not THE most pleasant experiences we have had working with a contractor (and we have had many over the years). We actually miss seeing Matt and Jeremy every morning and every member of their crew was really great to deal with. I am looking forward to having them come back and do our backyard next year. Sorry Jeremy, it won't be as big a project as the front, but we can't think of having anyone else do the job at this point.

I am completely happy with SafeTech; I like it better than ADT. I'm happy with the service. The installation was great and they are very responsive. I would recommend this company to my friends.