My Recommendations

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 - ...

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 ...

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...

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 ...

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...

After years of dealing with Blinds To Go, we had finally had enough. While the experience of going to a store and choosing from a variety, I wanted to try and use an in-house consultation and installation to avoid any further mishaps. We contacted GotchaCovered in Ottawa  to see what could be done in our bedroom. The consultation was fantastic. Cathleen looked at what we needed to do and offered a number of options. She provided her own opinion and design ideas but respected our overall designs. I can't stress how valuable this is in the consultation. Many will say "well, that's what a consultation should be like" but if you've ever had contractors or bad experiences, you know that in many cases, the consultation is more of a "Ok, sign here" type approach. This was a really NICE experience, especially knowing there was no commitment required. The blinds arrived as scheduled. There were some miscommunications with the installers that delayed the pro...