Continental Brothers Construction Inc.

The most important thing that you’ll want to know:
1. YES, we would recommend Victor M. & Continental Brothers to family & friends and
2. YES, we would use them again to finish basements in any of our future homes.

Overall, we are very happy.

We went from an unfinished basement in a 4-year old detached home to a 950 sq ft stunning finished basement. It has a 3-piece bathroom (shower, toilet, vanity), den with lovely frosted glass French Doors and the rest is an open concept floorplan, which is what we wanted.

Timing:
The job took about 8-calendar weeks from the start time to end time. However, 1-week was lost while we did spray foam insulation (done via a separate Company that I already wrote a review on) and 1-week while we were out of town. Thus, about 6-working weeks for Victor & team.
The 6-weeks was the time estimate that Victor provided when he did our quote so the job did not have any time delays and potentially, more importantly, we did not have any cost overruns. We paid what was quoted. That seems to be quite rare as we see reviews from others where customers need to pay contractors extra compared to the quoted price.

Personnel & Leadership:
Victor is the owner of the Company and is the person that does the quote, does the work, Project manages the team & sub-trades, and more importantly, is your “go to” person for questions and comments.

Communication:
Victor was always open for communication. As Type-A personalities, we liked how he would ask us for input on a daily basis for certain decisions. We appreciated that even though the work day was done and the rest of the workers had left for home that Victor would stay behind and wait for us to get home after work to walk us through what had been done, check-in with us to see if we had questions and ask us for any further input.

Flexibility:
Victor was flexible with us. Although his quote includes insulation and laminate flooring, we wanted to do spray foam insulation and vinyl plank flooring instead. Victor was able to work with the different materials and was able to work with the timeline needs for the separate spray foam company. The quote includes the bathroom exhaust vent and Victor installed a different vent for us that I had selected instead of his standard exhaust vent.

Pricing & all-inclusive Quote:
One of the reasons why we picked Victor was that his quote was all-inclusive. So we did not have to worry about [or pay for] extra materials, parts, labour, etc. For example, it included a high-efficiency American Standard Toilet and Moen bathroom hardware. We recognized those brands so we were comfortable with them. We did not want inferior products. We were able to select the styles that we wanted. Further examples of the all-inclusive quote are that it includes LED potlights, all the porcelain tiling including grout [some other basement quotes we received charged extra for grout! Or extra costs to upgrade from ceramic to porcelain], doors including all door hardware [we had one basement quote that required us to purchase our own door jambs, which we didn’t even know what that was until we Googled it. That was very surprising for us].
Payment terms are very favourable. Most contractors’ quotes needed an upfront payment as high as 50% of the quoted price. Victor’s payment terms are weekly once the job starts. For example, if the job is $100 after HST tax for 10 weeks, then you pay $10 a week on Friday each week.

Extras:
In addition, without any delays to the quoted timeline, Victor & team were willing to do extra minor stuff and repairs/maintenance around the house. We offered to pay extra for the extra work, but since they were minor, they were kind enough to do it for free. Please understand that if you ask for extra work to be done that is more significant, then you should expect to pay as that’s only fair. At least it will be at a reasonable extra rate/charge.

Minor Constructive Feedback:
If anything, the only minor constructive feedback that we have, especially as non-smokers, was that we did not appreciate members of Victor’s team smoking outside on our property and occasionally leaving cigarette butts on the ground or in our compost bin [cigarette butts are NOT compostable in our area]. It should be noted that Victor does NOT smoke. And especially impressive was that once we raised the issue to Victor, he personally went out and picked up the cigarette butts left by his team. That is such a gross & dirty task, that I really appreciated that he did that to ensure that he addressed our concerns.

Feeback from Friends & Family:
Everyone that has seen the new basement so far has really been impressed by both the overall look and quality construction & materials.

I've attached some before and after photos. Apologies that Homestars does not let me rotate photos.