Kevin in High Park

Magnum came on the back of our General Contractor for a major renovation of a 100 year old house in High Park. Their scope of work was replace oil furnace with gas one, zone the heating system (new pex piping..) and install space pac air conditioning system with 21 outlets. They may be "qualified" but they inexperienced and this revelled it self quickly. The heating system was initially installed as one zone versus three - they then added two zones. The three zone tie-in at the basement looks like extremely unprofessional dispite three attemps at it. One of the temperature controllers were installed directly above a radiator. The main controller (air/heat/humidity) was installed directly below a air cond. vent. The space pac unit installation completely ignores the manufactures min straight length approach distances for intake and exhaust. Several discharge air vents have come away from the ceiling. Pex pipe comes up from above the floor in several locations. During filling of the heating system (rads and pipes) our brand new leather sectional was flooded because a rad air valve was left open. When it was pointed out the site workers and owner - blank looks was all that was offered.

We hired Avenue to move our stuff into storage, hold it during a renovation, then move it to our new house all within Toronto. We also agreed that on moving day after picking up the storage items the moving van would stop at my condo to pick up 5 items of furniture, Showed up on time got the stuff at the condo then the games began. The van had to park 6 houses away on our street (think narrow houses downtown Toronto). We were informed that they would not unload the truck until a second crew came as the distance exceeded 10 car lengths. I found it all very petty since there was only six cars between the rear doors and our house. We paid for the extra crew (it was all an hourly estimate anyway) and I kept the $500 tip I had for them in my pocket.

Classic case of good service before deposit was paid, service starts to drift after first deposit then went completely down hill after second deposit paid. We hired the Hemel Group in March/April of 2007 the kitchen was installed with deficiencies in Jan 2008. As of August 2008 we are still chasing Hemel Group (Garrett Hardy) to complete the repairs. This kitchen was part of a $400K house renovation. We were quoted about $30K for the cabinets and island and this portion of the work has been the biggest head ache. The problem is Hemel Group is a one-man-operation who lacks skills in quality control and basic good business practice. Unreturned phonecalls and emails is to me a mortal business sin and this is where we are with Garrett Hardy. After paying our second deposit of $15,000 in July 2007 we waited over three months for cabinet door samples. This delayed our selection of granite, flooring, backsplash etc... We signed off on fabrication only to have the installed cabinets arrive with numerous deficiencies which included missing storage areas and different end panel frames on the peninsula compared to the island. To this last item Mr Hardy's response was "...we often do that that as clients like it..."? Offers were made to repair/replace cabinets ..but still we wait for the final work to be completed with no supervision by Hemel Group - we are left to call the cabinet maker directly. Following Garrett's recommendation we increased the height of the Vent-a-hood installation from 30 to 36" above the range. A big mistake as the smoke detector goes off every time I use the grill. Vent-a-hood clearly states 30" make for their unit. I can't think of anything good to say about our dealings with Garrett Hardy and his Hemel Group.