M in East york

Since moving to an apartment, I decided to turn the living/dining room area of my apartment into my own art haven. To fulfill this vision, I began with purchasing my first HUGE painting during my summer trip to Vietnam. However, this painting came without a frame. On the hunt for a great custom framing store, I came across Off the Wall Art & Framing and never looked back! When I took our painting into the store, the owner worked with me to find the perfect frame for our vibrant Vietnamese painting. The owner showed me 5 different frames and explained why each of them would work and what type of statement each frame would bring to the painting. In the end, I selected a deep brown wooden frame, which brought out the browns in the painting and matching the bright blues and greens in the picture. After two weeks of stretching out our painting to make it flat, my painting was framed and ready for pick up. I was so happy to see the painting looking beautiful in the frame and I even received compliments from other customers in the store. Overall, my $300 framing experience was worth it. Plus, it may sound expensive BUT framing is not cheap and this was the best deal I could find. Since my first-time experience was great, I have decided to order a print to hang over my bed through Off the Wall!

I should probably being by stating - I'd never had anything framed professionally before. I'd always just printed images off on Photo paper, and stuck it in a $1 frame from the Dollar Store. Would I hang it in a Gallery? Hmm..maybe, if it was some pretentious comment on Minimalism. However, I'd never feel comfortable giving someone something so, uhm..."Fiscally Responsible" for something like their birthday..unless I really didn't like them. I'd walked past Soho a number of times, but never really had anything I needed to Frame..until last week. I needed to have a Picture printed, and Framed...in 24 hours. I went to Soho and was ready to be passively ridiculed for not knowing anything about matting, frames, "what works", and ready to be laughed at when I said I needed it in 24hrs. I was really pleasantly surprised. The Owner was very accommodating, knowledgeable and more-or-less promised he'd be able to get it done, no matter how short the deadline was. I was not disappointed. Dropped off the print on a Thursday at noon, picked out the frame (the staff offered their suggestions as well), the matte....Friday at 5pm it was Ready. Can't overstate how amazing the Staff are, and the pricing is very reasonable considering it is all custom work.

These guys are a great local paint/wallpaper/etc. store. I've come to them for a number of projects over the years, and they've been helpful and given good advice. In fact, I had a custom colour made here once to match some old paint; I needed to repaint in the same colour recently and, they still had the formula in their computer records, and I was able to match it with no problem. The cost was great, too $35 per can of paint! West Toronto Paint is right on the corner of Dundas and Pacific Ave., so while the street parking is hard to get, they do have two private spots on the sidewalk beside the building. If they're taken, a municipal lot and a No Frills lot are by it just south of Dundas.

I bought a high-security padlock from these people several years ago and I'm very satisfied with my purchase. Finding Abloy locks in Toronto is a challenge and the $60 for this padlock is a great investment for my apartment building's locker room. Most of the other tenants use those inexpensive $3 - 5 locks from convenience stores but I wouldn't trust them one bit. My Abloy's security rating is such that it can be used in such secure places as an electrical substation or other high security environment because the two keys supplied cannot be copied by any hardware store. Only an Abloy dealer can do that and one needs to bring in the original registration card as well. The staff were very helpful and showed me the value for money and I don't regret the purchase.

A huge selection of lights and fantastic customer service. No pushy sales tactics here. I asked a bunch of questions and boy did they know what they were talking about (in fact I even learned a few things about ceiling fans). Saw the lamp I bought somewhere else for $80 cheaper here.......Walked out today with a great and inexpensive ceiling fan to replace the 'granny version" I have at home. A bonus, they have a pug named Fritz who is super cute.

Solid alarm company! Switched to The Monitoring Centre (TMC) after a dismal, never-ending 3-year term full of frustration with Reliance Protectron (Reliance is garbage company that's best avoided by the way...) I'm very impressed with the excellent customer service TMC offers. I made my appointment to switch over my system to TMC back in June. Just like the othe reviewer said...two days before the appointment, they called me up to make sure the appointment was still convenient for me and then even sent an email - impressive! I was given a 1-hour window when the TMC tech would show up - sure enough he came when promised. The tech checked over my system, tested everything and had me switched over to TMC's system in about 15 mins...great service. So far, i'm a happy customer of TMC. I've talked with others that have been TMC customers for over 10 yrs and they have nothing but praise. When compared to the others out there (ADT, Reliance, Alarm Force), that are charging over $30 a month for basically the same thing less the "system warranty," you are getting a lot from TMC - it's really a no brainer.