I had an excellent experience with Avenue Road Roofing. Upon buying our house earlier this year the home inspector pointed out that the flat roof had holes and would need to be looked at relatively soon. I took a look around Home Stars, and took to heart a reviewer who said that Avenue Road Roofing was like buying a Sony: it's more expensive, but you're paying for certainty that you'll get a high-quality, reliable product. We were very busy at the time and could have ill-afforded the time and energy needed to deal with an unreliable contractor who either did a poor job or refused to stand behind his work were it to fail in the future. What we needed was an exceptionally reliable company who would do very high-quality work, need minimal supervision, take care not to damage our property, clean up after themselves, and unequivocally stand behind their work. We got all of these with Avenue Road Roofing. (Because we have not had to test the warranty since we had the roof installed 4 months ago, we do not know what the quality or responsiveness of their warranty service is like. But we do know that the roof is warrantied against defects for 10 years, which is a good stretch of time.)
Their staff, from Dean, who came to the house and gave us a quote, to Barbara in the office who handled our scheduling needs, to Mario and his team of roofers, are the epitome of professionalism, politeness, good cheer and efficiency. They were all very good at what they did and showed the kind of attention to detail that a homeowner who is spending this much money on a single project expects. Mario's team was cheerful, polite, and very hard-working. They were also astonishingly diligent at protecting our bushes and garden from falling debris, as well as at cleaning up; having lived through two full re-roofings of Victorian homes in Toronto during my childhood, I was amazed at the clean state they left behind. (After they swept our patio I was pleased to note that it was, in fact, cleaner than it had been before they arrived - maybe I should get my roof redone more often.) Before leaving they inspected the property and garden with a fine-toothed comb to pick up stray pieces of roofing material, and they really did an excellent job - this is something that is not high priority for a lot of roofers (I can only speak from my previous experiences, where we continued to find chunks of roof in the flower beds a good 10 years after the roof was replaced!) and I was really very impressed. You could not, in fact, tell that any construction had been done on the house at all. Leaving an impeccably clean work site after the job is done is clearly a big priority for this company and it is one of the things you are paying for in their higher prices. (I should note that Mario went as far as covering the neighbour's lawn and porch with a tarp, in addition to our own; and was incredibly diligent in making sure that the large debris cart wheeled onto our front yard used the concrete paths and did not sit on the lawn, a procedure that took a good 30 minutes to execute successfully.)
Needless to say, I was quite pleased with Avenue Road Roofing. Overall, I would characterize them as fulfilling Mike Holmes' dictum of "doing it right the first time" - they are everything you expect an honest, reliable, diligent company to be. However, there is one caveat to my praise, and that is on price. They are definitely more expensive than other firms. Rather than characterizing them as a Sony I would say their prices are like Bose! Given our circumstances at the time (quite busy) it was worth it. But whether the higher price is worth it to you depends on whether you are able to do the legwork to research other companies, ask for references and talk to previous clients, and shoulder some of the uncertainty that comes from dealing with less well-known companies.
The work done was the full replacement of a flat roof at the rear of the house, of perhaps 280 square feet. The roof was previously uninsulated and so 4 inches of poly-iso (rigid) insulation were added. The price included the removal of all previous roofing materials (three layers - membrane with tar & gravel underneath), the insulation, flashings, and the removal of a single-flue chimney that was in disrepair and no longer in use. The work was completed in one day (7am-5pm).
