Laura in Ajax

I happened to notice a furniture repair/reupholstery store and I walked in and the owner Gary was on site. I had just inherited a 75+ year old diningroom suite and the chairs were covered in their original leather. I spoke to Gary about the chairs and he happened to have exactly the leather on hand that I wanted to re-cover the chairs in. We made arrangements for him to pick them up and he showed up on time and was extremely courteous. We arranged a time for the chairs to be recovered and he called me the night before to arrange the return of the chairs. When he walked in with the chairs, I couldn't believe my eyes. They looked absolutely STUNNING! Gary did a marvelous job. The work was clean and crisp and very professional. We were more than pleased and we are now thinking about having Gary now make us a headboard/footboard for our new king bed. I am so happy to have happened upon Gary & Burkey Custom Upholstery. I would highly recommend Gary and the work he does. I will attach before/after picture so you can see how wonderful the work was.

I promised to write a follow up review once Affordable Insulation came to actually do the work. I had taken the day off in order to be present for the work to be done and I received a couple of phone calls in the morning, to tell me exactly where they were and approximately how long it would be until they arrived! Now how nice is that! Syd & Rod showed up and Rod immediately went up into the attic to give it another inspection and to take photos to show us where we may be having issues. While Rod was in the attic, poor Syd was out in the rain inspecting the outside of the house. When Syd came back in, we talked about some of the issues we were experiencing in the house. Being a power of sale house, last year was our first winter in it and we just about froze...well no wonder...we had an average of R16 in the entire attic...some places we were down to drywall. Rod showed us actual pictures and we were having issues with "wind wash". And of course we had insufficient insulation. So they prepped the attic to prevent the wind wash from happening anymore and showed us the before & after photos as well. Anyway, Syd also thought that part of the reason we were so cold upstairs compared to the main level was that the furnace wasn't pushing out enough air. So Syd went to the truck and brought out this handy dandy little gadget and started inspecting our air vents in the bedrooms & upstairs bathrooms as well as the mainfloor and basement. He detected a 3 or 4 degree difference in temperature from the main level vents to the upstairs vents. He checked to make sure all the flaps in the vent were open...totally above and beyond the call of duty! He suggested we could try getting a fan booster from Home Depot to see if that would help...but promised that we would notice a huge difference once the insulation was blown in. Syd also inspected the rest of our house and gave suggestions to improve and make the house warmer and more energy efficient. Half way through the job, Jason the person that came to quote us, was in the neighbourhood and wanted to check in on us to see how it was going. He's such a great guy. The entire process for the insulation was 4 or 5 hours...they prepped the attic, showed us before and after pictures and encouraged my husband to go up in the hatch and take a look at the final product. It has now been a couple of weeks since the work has been done. We have noticed a few things. While we haven't changed our thermostat settings, it seems that the furnace doesn't run nearly as often as it used to and the house is more consistently comfortable with less "cold" spots. While walking up the stairs to the second floor, there isn't a noticeable wall of cold that we were experiencing half way up the stairs. The temperature seems to again be more consistent. The upper level is alot warmer. Previously, sitting on the toilet in the middle of the night felt like sitting on a block of ice! This is no longer the case! I can't say enough good things about these guys. They are knowledgeable, helpful and really go above and beyond to make the customer feel confident about the work they perform plus they also are great about giving additional advice on things that they notice. They are completely transparent in the work they do. They were definitely worth the wait and my husband and I would definitely recommend their services. They have that old time work ethic and want to do the job right the first time. Great job Syd, Rod & Jason! We are so happy -- thanks again! ============== I used Homestars to find this compay. I called Affordable and one other firm that never bothered to call me back. I immediately liked Jason when speaking with him and when he came to quote us he was on time, professional and generally just a great guy. He fully inspected our attic and then sat down with my husband and I to discuss the findings. It ends up that we had about an overall R value of 16 in our attic (no wonder we were freezing our heinies off in the winter!) He told us in detail exactly what he found in the attic and even provided drawings. He explained the different options that are available and compared it to the product that Affordable uses. I really like the fact that the product they use doesn't use Formaldehyde so there is no off-gassing (as we have a 2 year old in the house). My husband and I didn't even need to "talk about it"...we decided right on the spot to hire this company. Overall, we are pleased with how professional this company is and we are looking forward to getting this done so we can start saving money on our heating bills. Jason estimates that we are paying at least $70 per month more than we should be. The only caveat -- these guys are BUSY! Which means they are good. (and are members of the BBB to boot!)..but it will be approximately a month and a half from the quote time to the actual installation. We are on a waiting list, so hopefully if there is a cancellation, we can move up the date. I will provide another review after the actual installation. Based on our interactions so far, I have no problem with recommending that you contact them.

We moved into a power of sale house last year and knew the roof would soon need replacing. We noticed this Spring that we had some watermarks on our ceiling and immediately had the roof replaced. We wanted to blow some more insulation into our attic, but my husband was concerned that because there had been some water damage, that the insulation may have become moldy and may need to be removed. I spoke to the company that we were hiring to blow in the insulation and they recommended mold.ca. I am so happy they did! I called Gregg and he responded back very promptly. His price for the inspection was very reasonable and I assumed he would just come and check out our attic. He inspected the ENTIRE house -- the basement, the main floor, our bathroom and the attic. And there was good news! There wasn't a water leak from our roof -- it ended up being the humidifier we had in our son's room (it was a cheapy one from Shoppers that you plugged in and it just kept going until it was empty) and there was too much humidity and it stained the ceiling. Anyway, Gregg gave us a crash course in mold and gave us some tips to prevent any potential issues so we can avoid getting mold in the future. We were very pleased with the report he sent us detailing his findings. He was a great guy, very knowledgeable, reasonably priced and we would not hesitate to recommend this firm.

Flashback to late summer 2010. Just moved into our home and noticed a piece of eavestroughing missing off the side of our garage. Went on homestars and found John Whyte & True North Eavestroughing. Placed a call for an estimate. He returned my call right away. John actually showed up early for our appointment. Being a new homeowner and having no clue about eavestroughing, John gave me an unbiased education on Eavestroughing 101. He gave me an estimate and to be honest, I didn't really know if it was high or low. But due to the fact we had just moved in and spent most of our money fixing up the inside of our house, and we knew we'd need a new roof in 2011, we decided to postpone eavestroughing until 2011. Fast forward to Spring 2011, getting estimates for our roof and my husband asks me to also have the roofers quote on new gutters. Well, did we get an eye opener! We realized that John gave us an exceptional quote the year before. So I immediately called John this Spring. I asked him to come out and re-quote us. He came out to see us asap and as our situation hadn't really changed, he told us that the quote would be the same price he quoted last summer. WOW! My husband and I were super impressed. John exudes honesty, integrity and has that old-school work ethic that you just don't see anymore. I implicitly trusted him and once my husband met him, he told me I had made an excellent choice as to hiring John. As we were having our roof reshingled, we set up the timing of getting our eaves completely replaced along with new fascia along the front of our house. The day of installation arrived, we came out to move our cars and John was already on site and setting up -- early as usual. The work was done quickly, methodically and everyone was very, very professional. John even found some flashing left behind from the roofers during the clean up. We were more than pleased with the quality of work that was done. We had some wood rotting under our fascia which John replaced and repaired with a very, very minor additional charge. The house looks incredible -- what a difference! Thanks John -- I am so happy I called you back. Best decision I ever made (with the exception of marrying my husband!) You are such a great guy and I've already referred you and plan on telling everyone I know about you! If anyone is contemplating re-doing their eaves -- make sure John is the first person you call because if you even bother calling Guy #2 on your list, you're just wasting your time.

We recently purchased a home that had a rotting wooden porch column. Also the porch overhang was tilted the wrong way. About 2 weeks before we were scheduled to move, I searched the internet to do some research. Imagine my surprise that not a lot of companies will replace porch columns. I called & Herb promptly answered my call. We chatted about my issue and he gave me a ballpark estimate over the phone and I promised I would call him once we moved in. When I was ready, I called Herb again and he scheduled an appointment with me a couple of days later. He showed up PROMPTLY when he said he would, he gave us a verbal quotation followed up by a written estimate via email. We asked him a bunch of questions which he patiently answered. His workers showed up on the agreed upon date & time and were very courteous and professional. We asked them if they could raise the porch overhang a bit to make the slant a little less noticeable. They were more than happy to do so. They cleaned up after themselves and were very pleasant to deal with. I would not hesitate at all to recommend this firm!