Howie in Scarborough

We brought a detached home from Country Homes in the summer of 2002, we have had more complains about this company than praises. Now I understand that Country Homes do not actually build houses themselves, they contract it out to contractors. Here are some of the "good" we see in this builder: (1) The design is attractive, we admit we do like their styles (2) Their selection of designs. And here are the "bad" we found with this builder (1) They took FOREVER to respond to ANY of your complain if at all - took them over two years to reply to our first complain about the cracks in the basement concretes. I had to call and fax the complain countless times. And when they did came, it wasn't helpful at all, they say unless the crack is large enough to put your over-sized pen in it, they will not do anything about it. (2) They hired the WORST plumper to do our plumping. Those guys are too cheap to even put in a few clamps on their copper pipe, so every time we use the water, the pipes are making so much racking noises. One of the pipe actually broke and flooded our house during our second year here. Country Homes did not respond to this complain and we had to pay for the damages and repair out of our own pocket (our house was under warranty!) (3) The guys doing our insulation is barely doing it to code if at all. My bedroom on top of the garage is freezing during the winter months. Our heating bill during the winter months hover around $600/month. We had to take out the drywall around the house and added more insulation 3 years ago. Our heating bill during the winter months now max at $250/month. (4) Country Homes only make upgrade recommendations that cost us a fortune and ignored all of the minor "upgrades" such as phone jacks and lights in the shower. They manage to convince us to spend $5000 plus tax to upgrade the oval bath tub to include 6 jets, so that is like $1000 per jet??? We was stupid to buy into it because we used the jets less than 10 times over the last decade. Because they didn't tell us about the phone jack upgrade, we had to call Bell to do it, not only Bell charge $75 a piece, they had their wires all over the house on the baseboard. They say they cant hide it behind the wall (they are too lazy to fish the cables) and insisted that if we wanted it inside the wall, it had to be done with the builder. I have many more complains regarding this builders, but I think you get the gits of my review. I would definitely NOT recommend this builder.

This review is almost 9 years over-due. We brought this house in late 2002 as brand new. It has double door garage, both needed a garage door opener. We went to Sears to buy two garage door openers, but it just seem too complex to install it at the time so we decided to hire someone else to install it. I forgot how we came across this guy at First Choice Garage Doors, but now almost 9 years later - we still appreciate their service (we still have his business card stapled next to the garage door opener. The installation took about 5 or 6 hours, it was in December or January when he installed it for us - so it was freezing out there, but he finished the job. Garage door opener is one of those things we wonder how we live without it. Almost a decade later, both of our garage door openers are still working - so we like to think it is largely owed to the guy at First Choice Garage Doors for doing a proper job installing it. I definitely recommend them.

2 days ago when we came home from work, our neighbor had these guy from Rapid Tac on his roof installing the Whirly Birds. Curious about how much it cost, we went over to ask the neighbor. Apparently since they are already in the area, they gave us a discount of $40 per whirly bird installed (we have to buy the whirly birds ourselves at Home Depot. $40 per whirly bird is well worth it , I am not climbing up there to save $120 on the hottest day in Toronto's history (to-date). I definitely recommend these guy at Rapid Tac and will likely call them up when we need our roof re-shingle in a couple years.

I work at the Hospital with rotation shifts, I often have to work night shifts and sleep during the day. My bedroom is on top of a garage with a bow window facing East, I love the view/light it has to offer (when I am not trying to sleep). But on those days that I need to sleep during the day, the sun is just unbearable. I had blind and draperies, but my room still heat up like an oven and the sun shining in is just too much. A friend of mine told me to look into Shutters and recommended Premium Custom Shutters. I gave them a call and they came to my house the next day to measure my window. They came back 2 days later to install it for me (they even help me get rid of my old blinds - if you live in a Toronto residential neighborhood, you know how painful it is to dispose over-sized trash - so I am very grateful for that). I have these shutters for more than a week now and it is wonderful! I can feel significant differences in temperature in my room during the day - especially in the past few days with the heatwave in Toronto. More importantly, it help block the sunlight so I can sleep during the day, that is PRICELESS for me! I highly recommend these guys at Premium Custom Shutters for their service and shutters.