De Taeye Designs

Met Shawn at the Whitby Home show last year and was impressed with his display. Mentioned that I had a leak in my basement and we set up an appointment for him to come look at it. The leaks were mainly along the back wall and a couple along the walls adjacent to the back wall.

Pleased with the initial estimate, we decided to move forward.

On the day of the job Shawn came himself to do the work with one of his new helpers. Shawn instructed his helper to remove all of the blanket insulation from all the walls, even the ones that were not exposed to the outside and would not cause any leaking. when I asked about this, he assured me that this was necessary to ensure we addressed all leakage issues, but that I shouldn't be concerned because if I selected him to finish my basement, that the cost of fixing the leaks would be used as a down payment to the cost of finishing the basement.

Fast forward a few hours and the leaks are all plugged. Of course there were no leaks on the walls that were not exposed... but again Shawn took measurements for finishing the basement and assured me that the cost for the day would be used as down payment for finishing the basement.

Over the summer I called a number of times to follow up on the estimate to finish the basement, with no success.

This fall I did receive an email from his company asking me I wanted to proceed with fixing the leaks in my basement. On receiving this email I called Shawn again, to ask him to quote me on replacing the blanket insulation that he took down. He suggested that I look at spray foam and that it would be part of the cost of finishing the basement. When I said that I had never received his quote for finishing the basement, he claimed that they sent it back in the spring and were waiting on my response. When I said I never got it, he asked me to send him an email to ensure that he was sending the estimates to the correct email address.

I sent him an email and he confirmed receiving it and said that the girl in the office would send off both estimates.

No estimate received to this day.

Instead I have to pay another company $1,700 to replace all the blanket insulation in my basement. so total cost to date = $5,200

I'm thankful that my basement no longer leaks, but will not be recommending Shawn and De Taeye Designs for any future work.

Funny enough, while he was doing the work in the basement I did ask him about the few negative reviews, about his lack of communication/follow up etc. and he took full responsibility for it. I guess I didn't think I would be the next lucky person.