Vivian in Ottawa

We hired Thorman Reno to tear-down and redo a previously botched bathroom reno – just about everything had to be redone. He came highly recommended to us by our neighbours, and after seeing his work there we were glad to have him on board. Finished ahead of schedule: Jeff Thorman originally told us that the bathroom should be done in a week, certainly no more than 2. We were pleasantly surprised to have a fully functioning bathroom in 6 days. He sped the work up by bringing a blower fan to quickly dry the drywall mudding and he came in on the weekend to finish quickly. In addition, Jeff's work is warranted for 10 years. After Jeff was done and fully paid, there were some small paint touch-ups necessary and a member of Jeff's crew came in to do that without a hassle. Months after the bathroom was done, the caulking was peeling around the tub and turning pink, and Jeff came into to remove the caulking and re-do it. Left our house clean at the end of each day: Thorman Reno cleaned up every day. There was no mess left in our house. They used the appropriate floor covers, and I really liked that they made a little zipper door and had a blower fan to take out the dust when they were working on the dry wall. They taped down paper to the floor to protect it, and then used mats on top. Great problem-solver: Our bathroom is a small 5' x 8' space, so not a big space to get creative. We gave Jeff carte-blanche on the tiling in our tub surround though. As people who have no construction/renovation experience, we had no idea what to do with a window inside a tub – apparently neither did our first contractor (as his solution was unsightly and would have caused a water issue). Jeff's solution is both practical and aesthetically appealing. Jeff tiled the inside of the window and even made sure to slope the bottom edge of the window slightly so that the water drains out. We'd hire Jeff again: We have many more renovation projects in the future, including a major basement reno and a kitchen reno. Seeing as how we were already stung once by a bad contractor, my husband and I have decided that any future reno work will be handled by Jeff. Even if Jeff's price is higher than other contractors, he is well worth it for piece of mind. (When we got the quotes to re-do the bathroom, Jeff's price was in line with the other 3 quotes we got. However, we chose him because of the glowing recommendation by the neighbours). I can't stress enough how impressed with Jeff we are. His experience shows in little things – like being able to tell just by walking into the bad bathroom that the floor wasn't level. We tested him, put a level on the floor and it was as he said without using tools – the floor bowled in the middle by a 1/4". At his suggestion, he put insulation around our acrylic bathtub. The result is that when we draw a bath in that tub, it stays warm, even an hour later. We consider Jeff our go-to guy about house stuff.

CP Renos provides a poor quality of workmanship for the 10+ years of experience that the owner Travis C has or at least claims to have. His overall level of finish and attention to detail would be on par with doing it yourself with little experience. He is either very poor at time estimation or time management since the job was quoted to take about 2 weeks and it has been 4 weeks (so far) and the job is still not complete. As far as price - CP Renos was in line with two other quotes that we had gotten from other general contractors where we said that we would provide all the finishing materials (toilet, tub, tiles, vanity etc.). As far as punctuality - CP Renos was routinely late in showing up for the day's work, often with excuses about traffic or needing to go to Home Depot first. A typical working day is about 4-6 hours of labour, and Travis often left the job site with incomplete work. For example, he told us he expected to be done drywalling on one day, but when he left, there was still a 1.5' strip of drywall that hadn't yet been installed. Another day, he told us in the morning that he had expected to start tiling the tub surround, but by day's end not a single piece of tile was up. He's made mistakes that seem to show inexperience in renovation — such as taking a few measurements and then pre-cutting all the required tile to tile the tub surround. In terms of cleanliness - the demolition of the bathroom was done without any regards to protecting the rest of our home from the mess. After cutting tiles in our garage, a mess of wet tile dust residue was left caked to our garage floor. The bagster he left on our lawn is over-flowing with debris. Examples of his poor workmanship and inattention to detail include extremely poor "final" mudding of drywall joints (that are only 3" wide and should be at least 12" wide); inadequate repair of the cuts he made to the ceiling; sloppy window trim where the tile should have been done right to the window frame; a crooked edge along both edges of the tub surround; sloppy grouting; too-large holes cut in the drywall for the toilet valve, outlet and switches that can't be covered by flanges or outlet cover; he hung a door for our linen closet backwards so it doesn't properly close (it pops) and many many other mistakes. We have voiced our concerns to Mr. C and asked that he send an appropriately experienced employee to address the deficiencies and properly finish the job. He has refused, yet still insists that we pay the balance of the job (except for roughly $400) because by his quality standards, the work done is "acceptable" — though he has never addressed our list of deficiences in person, and only by email. Clearly, there is no pride in the quality of workmanship.