Penguin Basements

Overall- we are happy with the finishes in our basement, and that it is now functional with a full bathroom and laundry area. It was also done relatively in the budget we expected, and in a timeframe that worked for us. That said, the final result differs in some areas from our initial expectations.

There are several things we liked during our experience:
> Penguin is a “1 stop shop”, I didn’t have to do a lot of shopping around for materials etc. They also take care of all the permits. The final result, particularly the flooring and the tile upgrade we did is quite nice.
> I liked using the builder trend system to understand which parts of the process were coming up next. The organizer (Chris), and project managers (Juliano + Josh) were great about letting me know when to expect a lot of dust (important as I was pregnant during the renovation).
> 2 of the project managers we worked with stood out for a number of reasons. Juliano was our first project manager and Josh was our finishing project manager. Both of them were nice to work with, super responsive, respectful of our house (Josh got along great with our dog), very knowledgeable about the ins and outs of construction and tried their best to help us with the issues we came across. Although some of the concerns we had could have been handled differently at the get go, I do think that the responsiveness of Josh, Juliano and Penguin to most of the issues was fair and professional. I think if every PM was like Josh (and Juliano) the construction world would be less stressful.

Areas for improvement:
> Considering the importance of space maximization in a small Toronto basement- we feel the finished product didn’t optimize the space as much as we would have liked due to 2 key things:
1. The design process. The design was aligned to at the sales meeting and reconfirmed before the start of construction. On the first day of construction we were told it wasn’t feasible to have our bathroom and laundry centre in 1 space. Juliano then quickly re-designed for us separating the two. This resulted in sub-optimal use of space and lighting which could have been addressed if we had planned better.
2. The insulation material. The material used & framing resulted in thick walls which seem to have moved in almost a foot vs the original brick/cement. We wish we had a better understanding of how this would end up, and that we could have discussed other insulation options. The basement is now the warmest part of our house so obviously the insulation works, however maximizing space would have been our priority.
> In the framing somehow we all missed the doorframe around our back door- it’s not that big of a deal, however it was a miss that couldn’t be corrected in the end. Recommend anyone with multiple doors in basement consider the door frames when approving framing.
> Working with different PM’s throughout the different stages made communication complicated at times. That said, I’m happy I got to work with both Juliano and Josh (per above comments).