My Recommendations

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Bissel Spinwave Plus Robotic Vacuum - mops and cleans

I had a Roomba when they were first introduced in the early 2000s. When it finally bit the dust, I wasn’t willing to give over the $299 (when I bought it was $199) to fix the battery or get a replacement unit (as a note, the original Roombas were not $599 as they are now). I have held off on looking at other vacuums until recently. I liked the idea of the Scooba but wasn’t that sure about a dedicated mopping vac. I then saw the Bissell Spinwave that could do both and said “that’s something to look into.” I’ve only had it a few days but am really enjoying it. It only has two modes : automatic and spot. It would have been nice if it had a way to manually redirect it but the app itself does work fairly well. Unlike the Roomba, it starts going in straight lines, wanting to move to the left (so always start it on the right wall). I say that with some trepidation, however, because when in mop mode, I just let it go and it made its way through our “open floor” main level which has ...

RECOMMENDED: Tailored Living featuring Premier Garage (Ottawa)

This was a great experience! The Do-It-Yourselfers may groan at the idea of having someone do the garage for you and will point out that you can get floor cabinets but after looking online and going through our garage renovation , there were two things I learned: 1. Garage floors aren't flat. That means you HAVE to put things on the wall if you want them straight. 2. Full on wall cabinetry is expensive, especially if you want to handle heavy loads. The ones you buy from Home Depot and the like can't handle heavy items - many top out at 25-50 lbs per shelf. Enter Tailored Living . Jason Allen met with us and went through several design iterations. His original proposal (a fully loaded garage) was a little on the expensive side but he worked with our budget, putting up with me asking for "try this, try that" and ensuring the finished garage work would meet our needs. As he said, "you can always expand later". He had us scheduled in very quickly - ...

RECOMMENDED: Blinkist - excellent summaries of what you wish you could read

I love audio - no big surprise there (I listen to a bunch of podcasts and despite sometimes questionable audio quality, I do have my own ). And I love to read. But it's not easy to read a book when driving and when you're driving short distances, it's hard to get into a good book. Enter Blinkist . I learned about this from the James Altucher show and thought I would give it a try using the free trial . The annual subscription after that wasn't so bad, especially if I found I would use it a lot. 130 books in and I'm really enjoying it. I've covered a huge number of topics (everything from food culture to math and physics ) and have gone back to read summaries of books I've already purchased as well as purchased books after having my curiosity piqued. To be fair, I have questioned whether authors do get any benefit from summaries but much like other Executive Summaries, if a summary intrigues even 1% of its listeners to buy the book, it's ...

RECOMMENDED: Garage Perfect Flooring

After years of dealing with the standard "out of the box" garage flooring, we knew we needed to do something with it. We looked into painting or doing the work ourselves but then after looking at epoxy solutions, we found Garage Perfect . Yvon came out to our home and walked through the process. He identified some areas that were going to be more troublesome but the quote that came back was very reasonable. We did have some initial scheduling hiccups in getting an install date and the "one day" did turn into a few days but that was mostly due to drying time. We left everything out of the area for a full 72 hours. But the actual "job" was done in just over a day. In the end, Yvon, Zack and the Garage Perfect team have rejuvenated our garage and it looks spectacular - our only problem is it looks so beautiful that we don't want to park our cars in it! A few weeks after the install and we're still loving the floor. It feels great on bare f...

RECOMMENDED: California Closets (Ottawa)

Our Bridlewood home is perfect in every way, except for closet space. The master bedroom has always suffered with barely enough space for two people. After twenty years, something had to be done. Unfortunately, the only possibility I ever saw was pushing the bedroom over the garage, something that would have been extremely expensive. Then my wife suggested we do something in the basement area. I know you're thinking --- the basement? Well, we had already finished the basement. It had been used as an office for many years as well as a rec room but otherwise it was wasted space. Your basement is likely the same as well. You may have some recreational space but unless you've turned it into a proper bedroom and ensuite, it's likely an overgrown storage area. We also use the basement for other items such as our library and photo albums. So why not turn it into a proper closet or storage area? But what could we do? Do it ourselves? We wanted something that would look great and ...

NOT RECOMMENDED: Eagleson Flooring In-Home Pre-Sales Consultation (Kanata)

This is based on a single interaction so it may not be the case for getting actual work done but this one instance immediately took Eagleson Flooring off the list. We were looking for an in-home consultation for an existing kitchen floor tile replacement. I filled out the contact form on their site and waited. I was really surprised that I received an email THAT DAY (Saturday) and the discussion went really well. We were scheduling a time for the following week and I was really looking forward to it. Then the phone call came. I explained what we were trying to do and rather than offer options, the project manager said "come into our store" (despite asking for an in-home consult) and actively discouraged us from doing the job because the tile was already there, citing higher expenses. If they were the only company we were looking at, we would have come away extremely disappointed. Luckily, we found another company that we decided to use - I will come back with a review o...