AQ in Cabbagetown

This guy, Tony, is to be watched out for. I am not entirely concerned that he is acting honorably however I won't go there in this review. I will say that this is Tony's 5th company in less than a year. His other ones have all gone out of business or are not "currently operating". Tony was hired to do a large renovation at my house in Cabbagetown. To say he botched most things he took on is an understatement. He was also hired to do my neighbours' house. He messed up their house as well. He quoted one figure and took that quote well over $100,000 by the time he was not even a fraction of the way through. I suggest very strongly that you NOT USE this contractor for anything. He also has a waterproofing company that left our basement wet and still leaking to the day of this review being written. He claims to be a concrete specialist but has made NUMEROUS mistakes when pouring concrete (that is when he did finally pour the concrete!). This guy has NO CLUE what he is doing. His quotes are all off and his work is poor, shoddily done and often violates code. Please contact me for more information.

Home Depot takes a lot of slack. They are a MASSIVE company and I guess to some extent we expect more from them. I had my carpet installed by them for their special price of $199.00 for any home, any size, any number of rooms. This was a great deal. I really thought that at that price I'd be getting ex-cons to install my carpet for me, people who would not be careful with the new drywall, new paint, etc. They were AWESOME. Two guys came in and finished a MASSIVE 1,900 sq ft in less than 6 hours! Very hardworking and they answered all my questions. Becoming a more diligent homeowner, I can assure you have A LOT of questions these days from all contractors. These guys deserve our praise and if we ever need more carpeting (too bad it's just for areas we don't really use that often these days) I will be sure to call them.

Entire 4300 sq ft house framing This contractor is indeed the true essence of the word PROFESSIONAL. As soon as Maurizio and his dad, Tony, came onto the site, I knew I was in good hands. Having had a horrid experience with the previous contractor, who had several building code violations in his framing work, I was devastated and scared, as a homeowner, to trust anyone else. I am not construction savvy and that makes me vulnerable. I am so happy I was introduced to this company. Maurizio priced a quote, stuck by his numbers and his time lines and did the work for an entire MASSIVE house. His team told us about the violations from the previous contractors and helped us fix them, without incurring obscene costs. This is a contractor you can trust, be proud to use and see awesome results of their work. I would wholeheartedly recommend this contractor.

With everything that went wrong with our renovation, I am grateful for good, honest, hardworking contractors like Waheed. He came to our house, showed us the issues we had with termites and within days had scheduled and finished the job. He then, as promised, came back a few months later and did the backyard). We had an entire OLD downtown Toronto house renovated. Termites are a known issue in the area. Waheed's work, his guarantee and his professionalism make him a solid winner. Please do not hesitate in using this contractor at all.

This guy is a hack. He has several companies that are artificially located in Toronto, Ancaster, Caledonia, York, etc. He has several phone numbers including 416-678-2788, (905) 515-8238. He did my entire house. All he did was make more work for us, cost us over $100,00 his quoted price, left our house open to the elements in winter, and then he KEPT our fixtures when we refused to pay his inflated bill. Please feel free to contact me directly should you want more information on Tony and his businesses. He is also telling people he is a waterproofing expert. Please do not use him for that. He took our basement, which never leaked, and make it leak! He also constructed a walkout for us from the basement and all it does is leak! What kind of "expert" would do that? BEWARE!!!!

Wow, what a great contractor. You know when you meet someone and instantly know they are a good person? Well, that's John. He came into our house (which was in shambles due to a previous rip off artist contractor) and fixed EVERYTHING for us to pass code. We were in violation of almost everything (thanks again to our useless previous contractor). Heating and air conditioning is not something you should leave to someone who is inexperienced (like we did) or just does not know what they are doing. John is someone you can trust and I'm so grateful for the tip! Many thanks, JS Mechanical!

This young man is exceptional in his work and his professionalism. He will go far with this business. After being ripped off by another contractor (who took our money and did nothing!) we hired Steve. He is quick, gave us a VERY reasonable quote for a VERY large house and got the work done in less than 3 or 4 days. That is very fast considering our last contractor took over 2 months to just show up at our house - only to ask us for more money! Steve is a contractor you can trust to get your job done right. Many thanks 360 Plumbing!!

This contractor is awesome. He gave us a quote, stuck by his time lines and did the work for an entire MASSIVE house. His price included a complete retrofit, brand new panel boxes, electrical plugs throughout the house and everything else that needed to get done. We also got 29 high end pot lights installed on our main floor. Ivano is a joy to work with and he shows up when he is supposed and does the job right. This is a contractor you can trust.

This is truly how contracting services should be run. I wish all contractors were this diligent, honest and professionally trained. Having seen the absolute worst contractor on the planet, these guys were heaven sent in fixing our basement (messed up by said horrible contractor). Clarke Basement Systems told us the cost, the approximate time to complete and gave us a warranty. They delivered on all aspects. I will sing your praises for many years, CBS. Thank you!

The owner of this company, Tony, told us that our basement would be water tight. We never had any leaks prior to Tony coming in. We had him do an underpinning (dig out the basement) and that is when the problems started. Despite a sump pump being in place (again something we never had or needed before Tony's work), and, as Tony assured us, an interior weeping tile system, we had a lot of water coming into our basement through a foundation wall. A LOT!! We were informed by another company who had to come in and fix Tony's mistakes that he did not bother to install an interior weeping tile system AT ALL. It was clear that despite charging us for waterproofing and an interior weeping tile system, Tony did not install same, but instead kept the money we paid him. The company that had to be called in to fix Tony's mistakes also had to break up a brand new concrete floor that we paid well over $10,000 for. The entire fix ended up costing us $13,000+. All because this "expert" did not have the slightest clue as to what he was doing. I strongly recommend you contact me if you want to learn more about this contractor. This is not the first time Tony has ripped someone off. BEWARE!!!!!

please do not use this contractor. he has a crappy employee named Tony who is only in the business to rip people off. please ensure that you use a reliable company with good references. you will see that once you ask for references, cameron from kingsway is very reluctant to give them. tony, his salesperson, is the worst. he did not do a good job as a contractor on his own and is now working for cameron, running the same kind of scam. BEWARE!!

We hired Tony (Anthony [Last name removed --Ed]) who owns By Design General Contracting (also [competitors name removed - ed]) to do a major renovation for us on our 160 Victorian home in Cabbagetown. Tony [Last name removed --Ed] is not equipped to be a general contractor and the trades he claims to be a professional in, masonry and basements, he is not. 6 months after he laid the concrete in our 4,300 sq ft home, we are had to hire a professional basement company to come in and fix major water seepage in our basement. On top of the $240,000 we were essentially ripped off by Tony, we now have to pay another $12,000 to have [competitors name removed - Ed] come fix the water issue. Tony never kept on schedule with the renovation. He bills arbitrarily and nothing ever sticks to any contract or time deadline. As an example, he called in the roofer to come re-do the new roof for the extension and while that roofer was on-site, he did not bother to have a skylight moved. He claims to be able to read City approved drawings, yet messed up huge on a fire corridor. His reason for the error? He "forgot" about drywall thickness and hence the corridor ended up being inches narrower than it needs to be to pass code. Please learn from our mistakes. Please do not hire this man. He is a menace to the entire idea of general contracting. He has a side kick named Joe [Last name removed--Ed], who is a real estate agent with Sutton Realty. Joe is a real smooth talker and both of them will make you feel like they know what they are talking about. We fire Tony after he nearly sucked us dry financially. My suspicion is that when we were left with nothing, i.e. financially, Joe [Last name removed -- Ed] comes back into the picture to help us sell our house (at a loss no less). What a bunch of crooks. It's in cases like this that karma is the only thing we can hope for. Well, that and warning others. Please do not hesitate in contacting me for more information. A and K