We had our basement finished this summer by the folks at The Basement Store. I have taken a while to write this review only because I wanted to make sure I invested the appropriate amount of time to do them justice.
We met with Mark in March to get some estimates on the job. He was very thorough and even pointed out some potential leak issues that we would want to check out before proceeding. Other contractors told us we had no issues once we pointed out what Mark showed us. He was quick to provide an estimate and very detailed and always available to answer and questions and to meet and go over things further.
One area we discussed heavily with Mark was our concern over finding a reliable and honest contractor. We had used other companies in the past where you are promised the moon and when its time to deliver, everything is different and also extra money, or not even possible to do. We were assured by Mark that they are reputable and stand by what they do. We also discussed our concerns over dust management as our son is severely asthmatic. He assured us he will work with us to manage dust as much as possible and even proactively wrote it on contract that extra dust protection was needed as there would a child with asthma in home.
We did our own research and contacted several people who had their basements done by The Basement Store and asked some tough questions – like, what would you change, what did you love, what did you absolutely hate. And we never heard anything that concerned us.
We booked with The Basement Store and started working with Cynthia, their in house designer. She is amazing and definetly helped manage our indecisiveness and help us determine what would work and within our budget. She helped bring our vision together in the way we wanted! She was onsite multiple times to make sure things were going to plan from a design perspective and didn’t shy away from recommending changes where she felt it was needed.
When the work started, Brandon was involved daily (and I mean daily – 7 days a week and basically 24hr a day). Any question we had he was immediately responding to calls or texts and was always easy to deal with. He oversaw the team of workers onsite and it was great to deal with day-to-day issues directly with him versus maybe upsetting the guys that were here if you had questions or concerns. Also, knowing Brandon has sightline to the overall plan made it easier dealing with someone who had the “start-to-finish” in mind versus crews.
A few weeks in my son started to react to the dust and I texted Brandon asking him what we could do to better manage dust (we already had a blue mat installed so that workers would only walk on that). He called me back in seconds and told me someone would be there that day to install two levels of dust production and he would bring in air purifiers. He also told his workers to bring two sets of shoes, one for upstairs, and one for downstairs. Further, he offered to have his guys come in through our basement windows! We didn’t them to go that far – we didn’t want folks coming in through our windows but the offer expresses the sentiment of this company to do whatever they can to make renos as stressfree on the family as possible.
Any questions we had, were addressed promptly. Any concerns as well.
The crews were all very polite and considerate. Depending on the job, they sometimes worked past 5, at the beginning during framing and drywall they were often here past 7pm and on weekends – however they always asked how late we were comfortable with them staying or if they could come on the weekends.
Once basement was done, Brandon asked us to prepare a ‘deficiency’ list for the crews to come back and fix anything we had concerns about. Most were very minor – switch faceplate crooked, touched up paint, etc. The most major was one tile in basement washroom had chipped at the corner during install. The list was still 2 pages long and his team fixed all items – even the tile. They cut it out and put a new one in.
The fact that fixtures are included helped a lot too – Cynthia sent us links to pick within our pre-assigned budget and we just picked what we wanted and the team picked it up and installed it. They managed the overall budget.
Overall, we are over the moon happy with their work and level of professionalism. We consider ourselves picky when it comes to contractors (given our past) and to say that we were over the moon, means a lot!
Great work Brandon, Cynthia and Mark and crews. Thank you!
Ange & Dan
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