Eric in Toronto

I needed to replace the roofing on my garage and garden shed. I posted my project on Homestars. 3 roofers responded. Shane, the owner of Shandyman, came himself to check out the job himself. He was very professional as was his proposal and the contract we ultimately signed. When it was time to do the work, Shane was on site working with his 4-person crew. They did an excellent job. Shane was responsive and quick to answer any questions we had. I have already recommended Shandyman to friends. I would not hesitate to use them again.

Precision did a fabulous job cleaning our windows and eavestroughs. We had used another company for many years and grew increasingly unhappy. Can't explain why we didn't look elsewhere before but through Homestars we found Precision. The quality of Precision's work was first rate. They worked quickly and efficiently. They were thorough and careful. After cleaning the eavestroughs they even blew out all the leaves on our driveway and front walk. No extra charge. Just another example of their thoroughness. My wife and I will definitely use them again.

We did extensive renovations to our 1918 home this year culminating with the sanding of the original oak floors. Our contractor brought a flooring subcontractor for the areas he renovated. But that left two thirds of the floors in the house untouched including our central stairway which had been carpeted for who knows how long. The subcontractor quoted $5,000 for the stairway alone. He wouldn't touch several rooms that had previously been badly refinished. A friend recommended Olympic and Matthew. We will be forever grateful. Matthew did the stairway and all of our other rooms for $5,000. He used oil-based verythene which is much more durable than the water based verythene contractor's flooring subcontractor used. And Matthew's work looks better. Can't overstate how impressed we are with Olympic's work. We recommend them highly and without reservation especially for people like us who own an older home where you are trying to preserve some of the original features like gorgeous oak floors.

Home Painters did an excellent job prepping, painting and staining the exterior of our house and our deck. All our research stressed the importance of good scrapping, sanding and filling. The Home Painters crew worked hard at the prep. There was a lot of old paint that couldn't be scrapped off that had cracks in the surface. They assured me they could simply paint over the cracks to create a new sealed surface. However, when I asked that the cracks be filled there was no argument - they were happy to oblige. They worked quickly, efficiently and kept us informed throughout. They kept the job site clean throughout the process and cleaned up thoroughly before they left. My wife and I felt they did a very good job.

We have had an excellent experience working with Dave Iacoucci, the owner of Home Care Renovations, and his talented assistant Pete. They completed the job on-time and on-budget. Any additional costs fell within the 15% contingency we had anticipated. We would recommend Home Care without reservation. Dave, Pete and Dave’s subcontractors did quality work and were a pleasure to work with. Our only disagreements with Dave concerned aesthetics. He has his taste and we have ours. Not a problem because we were very confident in what we wanted. Dave would always defer to whatever we wanted. Our home is almost 100 years old. We renovated the kitchen and the master bedroom. We created a master bedroom with a walk-in closet/changing room and en-suite bathroom. We sanded and stained almost every floor in the house except those that had been previously sanded and couldn’t be re-done. We re-wired the entire house to replace any remaining knob and tube wiring. All work was done with building permits. It was a big job that took 4 months to complete. We approached this project very carefully having had a few awful renovation experiences in the past. We did our homework. We developed a Scope of Work and drawings with an architect. We interviewed 6 contractors. 3 were within $5,000 of each other while the other two were $20,000 and $50,000 higher. 1 declined to quote. We met again with the 3 contenders to review their proposals and ask for at least 3 references. We were down to two because 1 couldn’t or wouldn’t provide references. We selected Dave in part on the quality of the work we saw and even more based on the positive comments of the other people for whom he had done work. Their comments were much like ours – easy to work with, wants to please, gets the job done on-time and has terrific sub-contractors.

Copacetic owner Ian Alexander & his team are real craftsmen who take great pride int heir work. We had quotes from 5 other companies as part of kitchen reno. Copacetic's price was in the middle. But the quality of their work and their professionalism made them the obvious choice. They worked very closely with us throughout. The installation process was slower than we had expected. But given they were installing in a 100 year old house where walls and floors are not perfectly square, the install required lots of on-site tweaking. We are delighted with the results. You owe it to yourself to check them out if you are doing a kitchen reno. Their quality to price ration can't be beat.

Falstaff was brought to our home by our contractor as part of a kitchen and bathroom reno. Had them quote separately to replace knob & tube wiring. Did an excellent job. Minimal damage to walls in spite of the need to "fish" new wires everywhere. The work they did on the reno and the re-wiring was excellent. The work was done by owner Dave Fawcett and Kevin & Matt. All 3 are really smart, efficient, nice guys. Would recommend them without reservation.

Neighbour's tree fell into our backyard. Found 3 companies through Hometstars and asked them to quote. Prices ranged from $550 to $2,00 for the same job. Aaron and his son were not the cheapest but they were one of the quickest to respond. Did an excellent job. Made quick work of removing a huge tree and did a thorough clean-up at the end. Would recommend them without reservation.