Calico Design & Renovation

We decided to turn our basement into an industrial loft with an exposed painted ceiling. Roro (who refers to himself as Roy) is not as professional as others have written. He was friendly and seemed genuinely into his work however, he does lack framing skills. My husband said the basement framing job was unprofessional with huge gaps (upwards of 16” behind frames) so that Roy could cut corners and go around drains to avoid boxing them out. Windows have a minimum of a 4” gap from the frame. At one point, when I brought it up with Roro, he seemed to get upset when I told him I don’t want all that wasted space behind a wall. He said, well, you’re only going to get a couple of inches... (more like 12” extra). The framing around the circumference walls are a mess that has to be corrected and apparently, now that Roro has his payment in full, he has simply fallen over the edge of the planet. There shall be no corrections by him. Zero communication now that he has the money in his pocket. We overpaid him for the kind of work he did. He’s a one man show (where are people getting this Roy and his team from?). We only ever saw one other kid (maybe 17 years old?) when he hand bombed the 2x4’s into our basement window (and charged us a $300 delivery fee) and then another guy for the 4 hours they framed out a bathroom and a single wall. After that, it was all Roro. His days never started before 12. Usually he arrived closer to 1pm and would leave around 4 or sometimes 6pm. It took him a week to frame. Some frames he pushed back tighter against the basement wall after I insisted but overall, his work quality is poor and lazy. He did not want to cut short any pieces so if an 8’ board went beyond a corner, then he made the other side join it so both are far from the walls. A lot of wasted space. And he just kept on and on about how he was going to bring the drywall in. At that point I had decided there was no way I was going to pay him $5500 labour to drywall and pay on top of that for material (which would have made it $8000). HE DOES NOT HAVE A CONTRACTOR ACCOUNT WITH ANY HARDWARE STORE and so we ended up paying full retail price for whatever materials he used. Seriously, that is so ridiculous. He even rented a ramset tool then tried to pass it off in his receipts for me to pay for. He charged me HST but I do not believe he has an HST # and he won’t provide me with one. I did look up his company for reviews and they all seemed dandy. From what we experienced first hand, we find it hard to believe he as achieved 10 star reviews. Everything that has ever been written or said are not what we have experienced. No team. Just him. After he was paid (big mistake - thought the job was done) - he absconded into darkness. Our electrician commented about the ‘lazy’ work. One bathroom wall is 6” away from the wall. Another wall is still 10” away. We have hired another company to drywall. Their price includes all materials - $3500. A far cry from the $8000 Roro wanted. However, because of the ridiculous framing (no drywall boards line up to any studs - so reframing had to be done), it now cost us $4500 to drywall. There are no supports above any of the door frames. He also does not clean sweep after he’s done. He left a pile of sawdust, and over 600 pieces of cut wood. I think the photos speak volumes. Just look at the patchwork. In one photo you can see a long screw that barely touches the ceiling joist (guess he cut the wood too short for that one and left it) and in another you can see there is absolutely no stud attached to the joist to hold up the framing. For this he charged us $5000 to frame??? *The photo of the ceiling with the round vent behind the frame is in the bathroom. He was too lazy to frame around the vent in order to push the frame back against the wall. So instead I have a 6” gap there. I also have 5” of gaps between the window and the framing. Additionally, some of the walls are crooked as you can see - we placed a 2x4 against a ‘framed wall’ and you can see the huge gap in the middle. As well, while having the flooring installed we were shown how every single wall is slanted! There are zero square corners.

There wasn’t a trade that came in that did not comment about the framing. They all said the job was worth maybe $2,000 but the way our basement was framed, they said they wouldn’t have paid a dime. I asked Roro to fix what he did and he refused.