Vince L in Pickering

I waited a year before doing this review as I wanted to see how the windows performed during all the seasons. My wife and I were hesitant to engage a contractor as we have done all our own renovation jobs in the past, however this job was too big for the two us to take on ourselves. After a couple months of online research and visits to different showrooms we finally selected 3 - 4 companies to come by to give estimates. We found Steve to be very upfront, knowledgeable and professional. We also felt at ease with him and that the sales talk was not just a "sales pitch", and even though other companies said there was no pressure to go with them we did feel pressure, but with Steve we didn't get that feeling. One of the driving factors for me personally was Steve's commitment to follow up on communications within expected timelines; this demonstrated his personal professionalism and to me this would reflect how I expected his company would operate. The quote we received was not the lowest, but it was in a range we were comfortable with when compared to other quotes received, Steve knocked off a hundred or so as a bit of an incentive but our decision had already been made based on the advice received during the estimate and the rapport we felt with him. Installation was started within the agreed to schedule and was conducted by a father and son team whose names I forget, but they were an easy going, friendly and extremely hard working couple of guys. We were having about 25 windows and 2 patio doors replaced so it was a relatively large job. The team encountered some challenge during demo due to how the original windows were installed which necessitated an extra day in the schedule to finish up. Overall, I found them both to take pride in their work and be attentive to detail which resulted in a quality installation. For the most part, they did a good job of cleaning up after themselves and cleaning the windows once completed, but there were a few sweat smudges left on a couple windows, but I had no real issues with it due to how late in the evening it was when the work was completed and how exhausted they were. There was only one small hiccup in the installation and that was a small basement window that had been sized incorrectly. Steve re-measured and the replacement window was ordered and installed ahead of the expected delivery timeline. Window performance over the year has been as expected. Window mechanics function well, we have had no issues with condensation build up during the winter months as we had with our windows and the noise insulation is better than expected. At night we can hardly hear the trains that pass by about a half kilometer from us. I would not hesitate to use Fortress again in the future and have recommended them to a colleague at work.