Ottawa General Contractors

Please note that this is strictly a review of the design stage of my renovation. We had the pleasure of dealing with Deirdre Crick who helped us design our new kitchen. We own a very old building and we removed one wall that separated the small run down kitchen from a spare bedroom. Deirdre was able to fully render a gorgeous looking kitchen out of a somewhat cramped space. Her incredibly kind, thoughtful and caring nature is perfect for the job. She is as much of a listener as she is an advisor and that made my wife and I feel very at ease. She was able to guide us in a direction for material selection that never made us feel pressured. I highly recommend asking for Deirdre if you are planning a project with OGC.

Tyler

I chose OGC to do our basement and bathroom renovation. Overall the service, quality of work and timeline were on point with what we expected. We make use of the space daily and couldn't believe seeing our dream become a reality! Special thanks to Fatima and everyone involved with making our project a success. We will be contacting them next year when we are ready to renovate our bathrooms!

The experience we had with Ottawa General Contractors was characterized throughout as extremely professional. The star of the project was the work done by project manager Paolo. Communication was open, transparent and most of all - regular, which was greatly appreciated. Also, he was very flexible and accommodating during the project, and made whatever efforts he could to make what is naturally a very disruptive process (a renovation) - less disruptive, given that the renovation affected all three levels of our house - and our busy family stayed in the house during the renovation.

Alan Orasuk and Bryan Sim from Ottawa General Contractors were professional and true to their word. There are always glitches in any renovation job and they were attended to quickly and efficiently. I would highly recommend OGC.

We were totally redoing a bathroom in an older home and we got a quote from OGC. From the start, OGC was professional and responsive, which made us trust them and we decided to go with them. Our bathroom now looks incredible! Our only issue is that the timelines were substantially delayed -- but our understanding is that this is common with any contractor during a busy period.

I hired OGC to turn my basement into a legal apartment. The project took about 2 months overall, but WOW it was worth the wait! The contractors were skilled professionals, they guided us through the process and made us feel confident in our choice with OGC. The finished product was stunning, so much so that my wife and I thought about moving to the basement! The apartment is so nice, it brought us above average market value rent. We are so happy with the reno and the OGC team and will be recommending them to all of our friends!

OGC did my kitchen and bathroom. They did an amazing job. The quality of work is very good. I will be recommending them to all my family and friends. If you are able to, request Andrew Jabbour as your project manager. He is very responsive and was a pleasure to work with.

What we had done:
Basement:
Install engineered hardwood flooring and sub-floor, build a stone fireplace, install gas fire, new ceilings, lighting and integration.
Main Floor:
Remove old flooring and install new ceramic tile and hardwood. New custom design kitchen. Sand and skim ceiling in Family Room to remove popcorn. New lighting and integration. Full refit of Powder Room.
1st Floor:
Totally refit both bathrooms, with a redesign of the Ensuite bathroom.
Also, house fully repainted.

Our experience:
This was our first renovation, so having a company that could offer an ‘all-in-one’ service (project design, suppliers to source materials from at discounted rates, project management, city permits and sub-contracted labour), with a fixed guaranteed price, was very appealing to us.
Initially we were going to move out for our reno (as apart from the bedrooms the whole house was being worked on), but we were told it would only take 3 months, so we lived in. Sadly 3 months ended up being 6 months (not all because of OGC) . I will add that this was the summer of 2017, after a Spring of flooding in the Constance Bay and Britannia Beach areas, therefore, most construction companies were over committed on projects. Being a stay at home Mom with a toddler and 2 dogs, I found the 6 months of living this reno 24/7 very stressful. I strongly recommend that people do not live in on large projects!
The work started well, and we were happy with our fixed price as some of our materials were more than the projected estimate. Our first hiccup was when OGC invoiced us for ‘change orders’ for work that was ‘missed’ on the scope of work. We felt that these were unfair and the charges extortionate, so we disputed them. OGC (Brian and Allan) quickly resolved this dispute by agreeing to a reduction in the extra we were to pay.
Our work was carried out by sub-contractors and on the whole they were pleasant to deal with, worked hard and did a good job. The weakness was we had whole weeks where no-one was on site and only one trade was on site at any one time. We also found that each trade had no respect for another trades work, at one point we had our nice new hardwood flooring damaged because another trade didn’t protect it when working and drywall was allowed to dip/fall on our new kitchen and countertops.
Our Project Manager (Allan), was a great guy and worked hard……too hard!! At the time of our reno he had too many projects as OGC were short of project management staff. Therefore, he was not on site as often as we were promised. That being said, if ever we flagged a problem he quickly dealt with it. We found his knowledge of the trades to be excellent. During our reno it was our Daughter’s 3rd birthday and Allan showed up (outside of work hours) with a card and present for her on behalf of OGC; small gestures like this go a long way!! Also, when we had a problem with one of the sub-contractor’s volatile attitude and I asked that he not return to our home, Allan dealt with this immediately and showed empathy for my negative experiences.
At the end of our project we did have a couple of things that needed repairing under the 2 year warranty. These were dealt with very quickly and with no quibble.
In conclusion:
Having a company like OGC that offers an ‘all-in-one’ service is great. Their weakness is they use sub-contractors, so they are only as good as their subbies. We liked the fact they offered a fixed price and that materials could be purchased using their 40% trade discount (with no mark-up by OGC). We love the end product of our reno, but the work and timescale were stressful. OGC were great to deal with but their overall communication could be improved.
I would also like to mention Cutwell Kitchens and Urban Stone who helped give us the kitchen of our dreams, thank you.

Due to a medical condition we required a curbless shower in our master bathroom and needed to eliminate two steps in our master bedroom. We were rookies in the renovation area so looked for a company that provided a complete start to finish service. Overall we are satisfied with the finished product.