DSBG

My wife and I interviewed 10 well-reviewed contractors for our first major home renovation. We had heard many horror stories about home renovations and we were determined to try and mitigate our risk though extensive due diligence. After interviewing the 10 candidates, we narrowed our choices down to 5 possibilities and then went and interviewed and visited their references. After going through that two month process, we ended up with Nick Malfara and his team at Design Spec and I am happy to report that we have found our contractor for life (absent Nick deciding to pursue another career!). What immediately struck us about Nick was his level of professionalism, responsiveness and willingness to spend time with us and understand our needs and ideas about our living space. The level of customer service was exemplary – no problem was too small, no question was irrelevant, no time of day was off-limits, we always felt like our concerns were being properly addressed and prioritized. Over the course of several months Nick gained our trust, admiration and friendship for his honesty, integrity and his commitment to our project and to us, not only as clients, but as people. Not only did Nick introduce us to other service providers (e.g. architects and interior designers) that provided us with terrific service at exceptional prices, but he and his team regularly went above and beyond to guide us through the process and make our experience a positive one. We changed our building specifications several times and Nick was always very helpful in answering questions, offering ideas and drawing in the appropriate members of his staff to do the same. Our renovation experience did not have a typical ending. Just as major construction was ready to begin another house in our neighborhood came up for sale and my wife and I decided that we could not pass up the opportunity to put an offer in. We told Nick that we had to put a hold on our renovation and, if successful in our bid for the new home, we would have to abort the renovation as all of our cash would be tied up in the purchase. We were amazed and extremely appreciative of Nick's understanding and supportive reaction. Not only was he not upset, he offered to come and walk through the new home with us on bid day (a Saturday!) and give us his thoughts on the structure and ballpark estimates on improvements that we might want to make down the road. His advice and thoughts were insightful and helped us better formulate our bid price on the house. Ultimately, we won the bid on the new home. It was an exciting time for us, but we were concerned about what it would mean in relation to Design Spec. We had kept all of our payments up to date with all of our service providers but Design Spec had yet to issue an invoice. Nick and his team had put in months of time and effort and countless hours helping us – participating in meetings with architects, designers, electricians, plumbers, engineers, taking us to other Design Spec projects to look at examples of ideas and materials, pricing out a range of options for materials, heating and cooling systems and design features, talking me off a ledge when I was ready to spend $40,000 on new appliances in advance of having the kitchen design finalized etc. We assumed that there would be an invoice forthcoming and, quite honestly, we wanted to make sure that Nick and his team were fairly compensated for their efforts. On the night that we won the bid on the new home, we asked Nick to our home so that we could break the news to him in person. He was genuinely happy for us and, to our complete surprise, he refused to accept any payment for all of the services that he had provided to that point. He told us that he viewed the work that he had done to date as business development, that he was happy that he was able to help us and that he hoped that we would hire him when we decided to do the renovations on the new home. INCREDIBLE! We were completely taken aback and deeply appreciative of Nick's integrity and kindness. We are planning to start renovations anew next summer and we know that we will only have to make one call to hire our contractor! Hugo from Toronto