The owner of this business probably knows nothing or very little about construction. This guy would waste your time, would hire hacks (unqualified tradesmen) to do his work and would fail almost all of the inspections. I contracted him to renovate my basement and it took him 7 months (November 2022 to May 2023) to complete my basement (for context, most contractors complete basement renovations in 8-12 weeks and the size of my basement was less than 700sqft). He refused to provide me with a contract that would clearly state the timeline for the project and I should have realised at this point that he was phony and had no clue of what he was doing. He couldnt even provide me with a proposed layout drawing of the basement. Then the painful process of construction began. There were many weeks when no tradesman would show up on my site yet I made it clear to him that I needed the work to be completed as soon as possible. When he eventually did call for inspection a lot of the work he did failed inspections. My home failed a lot of inspections because this guy does not understand many of the building requirements/code. For example: The mechanical room was required to be smoke sealed, but he left a lot of gaping holes around the mechanical room. He used insulation (as a smoke seal) to cover up penetrations in the ceiling of the mechanical room. All of this led to multiple failed inspections and I had to hire someone at additional cost to come fix the issues. By the way he abandoned my project after the failed inspections and went on vacation for over two weeks and told me if I couldn't wait for him to return from vacation then I should get someone else to fix the issues and pay extra for that. Another thing that failed inspection was the flashing he installed above my side entrance door. For weeks after this failed inspection, he refused to show up to fix this issue and told me that if I cannot wait for whenever he is available, I should get another contractor to fix the issue and pay them from my pocket. That is how irresponsible this guy is. The items in his invoice are overpriced and yet he will use the cheapest and lowest quality materials and he will do the barest minimum. There are many items which he billed for in his invoice which he did not provide: Some of them are listed below: - He invoiced me $5,000 to provide me with exterior concrete stairs and ended up providing me with wooden stairs that were not even worth $500. - He invoiced me $1,000 for Inspection fees. All inspections by the City of Calgary are free of charge and hence no payment for inspection is required. You only need to pay for permits but the inspections are free. - He invoiced me $1300 to repair any damage he did to my siding while installing a side entrance door and properly install the flashing. The flashing was wrongly done, the side entry door was wrongly installed and could have led to water damage. I got another contractor to take out everything he had done and properly install smartboards and flashing to meet the building code and prevent water issues. I paid this contractor separately for this job. - He was supposed to put an underlay before installing the LVP flooring. He did not do this even though he billed me for it. Looking back, one of the biggest mistakes I made was making 100% payment to this dude. As soon as the invoice was fully paid, he stopped beig responsive or showing up to my site, I would call him to ask about my project and he would scream at me over the phone and tell me that he was busy and I was disturbing him. There were weeks when nobody would show up on my site to do any work. This is my personal experience with this dude and his company Design Reno Build. The trouble and heartache I encountered with this guy was not worth it. There are many contractors/builders out there who would deliver much better quality and services and at a lesser price.
- Approximate cost of services:
- $82,000.00