The whole point of us hiring a big company was to have a stress-free renovation with minimal management required on our part. Instead, we had 9 months of what can only be described as a nightmare. I would not recommend Home Reno to anyone. There were so many problems that it would take pages and pages to write about, so we will just highlight the most significant.
-Framers took 3 full days to do less than 20 linear feet of framing, that was done so poorly and not to specifications, that it had to be redone. They had access to the whole house and constantly found excuses to be upstairs (heating up food in our microwave, stomping through our living room). Thankfully they were not sent back after we complained to our project manager.
-Electrician poked a hole in the ceiling that went right through our brand new staircase. To date, that stair riser has not been replaced properly. The carpenter cut the riser a half inch too short, and the gap is visible when you are seated and looking at the staircase. -The plumber smoked in our house, and left a cigarette butt on the plastic vapor barrier, leaving a burn hole there. This is not only unprofessional but unsafe.
-The plumber put the plumbing at the wrong height and this caused a lot of stress and havoc when the cement truck arrived – we almost had to cancel this cement delivery – and instead ended up having to pour cement everywhere except for the bathroom – which then had to be done at a later date and causing the cement to settle differently in that area. Project managers rarely visited our home so of course there was no one there to realize the error of the plumbing – thankfully the cement-pouring guys noticed that there was a problem with the plumbing height.
-Later we found out that instead of venting the plumbing outside, the plumber had vented it into our crawl space, causing our finished basement to smell like sewage – we had plenty of stress and anxiety worrying about why. Thankfully, we figured out what the problem was and they were able to fix it.
-The framing was not done by the deadline agreed to, causing us to almost lose our deposit on the foam insulation company – and causing us to have to beg the insulators to come back, while the framers worked furiously, literally at the last minute to get it ready in time – they were pulled off another job last minute to quickly finish the framing on the day of insulation, when they knew about the scheduled insulation date for weeks.
-There would be no one showing up to work on our basement for weeks at a time with no excuse or reason why other than a vague response of “trades related issue.” -This shortage of tradespeople would conveniently happen the instant that an additional payment would be made.
-The side of our yard was constantly full of construction garbage and the personal garbage of the contractors (Tim Hortons cups, water bottles, etc.) At the start of the project, they dropped off a storage bin that was SO big that we couldn’t park our car in the driveway, or barely get past it to access the backyard or our recycling bins. We asked for a smaller bin, but it never came – for the remainder of the project. Instead, we had to bother our project manager every time the garbage was overwhelming and he would personally come and remove the garbage himself into his truck.
-The painter was subcontracted by one of the contractors, and showed up with his two kids for them to paint with him. One of them was a teenager; the other was no older than ten. -Our basement looks great, but this is only as a result of us continuously fighting and pushing for what should be standard operating procedure – someone showing up daily, or at least trying to, and someone doing quality work as per what the company promised. Every week it was a battle to get people to show up and every week, there was a quality issue that needed to be addressed. It got to the point where we had no choice but to withhold payment unless someone showed, and arrange for a daily payment situation to ensure that someone would actually show up. We even got to the point where we let some quality issues slide because we just wanted to not have to deal with them anymore.
-The owners need to seriously re-assess who they hire to do work for their company and ensure that they have enough qualified and trustworthy tradespeople on hand to do a job in a timely manner before they accept it. Our basement took 9 MONTHS to complete. This is 3x longer than they told us it would. This had nothing to do with the complexity of the project or the house being an old downtown house. It was simply because people didn’t show up to work on a regular basement.
-It seems like this company takes on more work than they have people for. They are eager to contact you when a deposit is due, but not eager to send someone your way to finish a job, and continuously break promises in that regard.
- Approximate cost of services:
- $75,000.00
- Company Response
Hello Ashot,
We have read the review from Ashot and Lisa and to be fair to both the Client and us we feel it necessary to reply to some of the statements made.
First and foremost we need to address the statement made that our workers are not qualified nor are they trustworthy. This is completely false. All of our workers have years of experience and those that require a licence are in fact licensed. This industry is known for having a high turnover rate of trades leaving for reasons such as poor scheduling, non-payment of work completed, poor leadership, etc. HomeReno is proud of the fact that we have zero turnover rate. In fact, we unfortunately have to turn down tradespeople that are recommended to us via word of mouth. We are also an equal opportunity company and very proud of this.
The comment made that we were scoping out the premises is absolutely false. We have never been accused of this by any project in the past or up to the time that this response is being written and we have successfully completed over 200 renovation projects in the past 3 years.
We feel bad that a diamond ring went missing, however, we were not the only tradespeople working at the time of this so called unfortunate incident. The Client had other trades working at the same time as we were there. They also had access upstairs. Our workers are well compensated and this accusation being directed at us is false and we will be asking the Client to have it removed voluntarily or through counsel.The issue of the Client experiencing an odour on their premises was not because of the vent pipe that was in the crawl space, which was temporarily put that way until we were ready to continue the pipe to the exterior, but was in fact a ‘P’ trap connected to their laundry machine which was never used thus not having water in it to prevent the odour from occurring. We immediately took action after the Client contacted us to resolve this.
To address the garbage in the side yard. Initially we had a bin dropped off in their driveway, as we do with all our renovation jobs. This was a large project and demanded the proper size bin. When the Client called us to state that the need their driveway to park their 2 cars, an agreement was made to remove the bin and in agreement with the Client, we would use the side of the house to place garbage bags until such time, we would come by and remove them. Never did we agree to a smaller bin. One of their concerns was being able to park both cars in the driveway. This resulted in a major inconvenience to us, however, we did agree to it and added the extra time and cost to us to maintain the level of debris to an acceptable amount. Never did we feel bothered when the Client would call us to see if we could come earlier to remove the bags of garbage. We did this immediately and with good faith.To say that we walked off with their drill is also a false statement that was never proven. All of our trades have their own tools and would never jeopardize their employment over a drill. As stated earlier, all our trades love working at HomeReno and they are all hard working and honest individuals. However, to keep the Client satisfied, we immediately replaced the drill with no negativity whatsoever.
Did this project take longer than the estimated 3 months? Yes it did. There were several factors involved that caused this project to run longer than anticipated.
Firstly, the scope of the project was much more complicated than realized upon the initial visit.
Secondly, we assigned a Project Manager, who came to us highly recommended, only to find out within 2 months that his qualifications were not at the level that this project required. He was immediately replaced by the Operations Manager, who immediately improved all areas of the project including communication, scheduling and planning. In addition, this is an old house located in the downtown district and to bring it up to code took a lot of work.Corrective measures were taken by us and the relationship with our Operations Manager and the Client were always positive and productive. Our Operations Manager always responded to the Clients calls and moved the project forward to completion. It is unfortunate that the Client only felt compelled to write the negatives, which, as seen by this response are not 100% true in facts. Everyone had a right to their opinions, but when presenting them to the public, they should be more careful in what they state.
In closing. After reading the Clients review, the President of the company asked to meet with them in person to gain a better understanding of their response, however, the Client turned down his invitation and thus would not give him the opportunity to hear them out to gain a better perspective of their review.
Regards, Remon