After purchasing a condo that hasn't been updated for almost 20 years, my husband and I decided to…read moretake on the stress of a renovation despite of many horror stories we have read and heard! We went in thinking we would be that one exception where everything would go perfectly smoothly. At the end of almost 4 months, we have to say "Of course, not everything was perfect. Things were really stressful. However, overall we are very pleased with the final products, quality and the working relationships with our contractor/designer, Renocon" The below describes our experiences with Renocon and we hope whoever is reading will find useful.
We met Renocon at the Home & Garden show where we were looking for some flooring options. Compared to other flooring companies, they had a variety of options, which led us to visit them in their store in the following week.
At the store, we met Milan, our project manager, who was able to give us high-level quotes on various renovation options ranging from low-end to high-end. What we liked about the first meeting with Renocon was that they were able to give us a rough idea about a typical duration and cost of a renovation, without insisting that they should have to see our place first before giving any estimate. At that time, we were just testing the water and wanted to get some ideas, so this worked very well for us.
After talking to a few other reno companies (who were quoting higher costs or longer duration) and getting a referral from a friend on Renocon (pure coincidence!), we have decided to go with Renocon and also do an almost full reno (instead of just flooring, we decided to update the kitchen and two bathrooms as well). In our first on-site meeting, Milan came with a designer - Zami, a general contractor - Brad and a cabinet maker. They listened to our wants and desires but also had shared a lot of ideas based on their previous work, which was very helpful.
Without going in too much details, we have spent the next close to 4 months working with Renocon to complete the renovation - our kitchen has opened up and fully re-modeled, our bathrooms have been fully updated including heated floors, flooring has been updated from old carpets to engineered hardwood flooring, we even added a few out-of-scope items such as changing the closet doors. The crew has been great!
- Zami, the designer, is such a pleasant person to deal with. She has been so helpful in many ways - drawing a 3D design so that we can visualize the concept better, selecting a few options to make our decision easier, jumping in whenever we need help, and so on. She is also very positive and very customer-centric.
- Brad, the general contractor, is one of the most trustworthy persons we have met with high integrity. He doesn't cut a corner and truly cares of the quality, even if this may mean he has to absorb some extra cost. Things felt bit slow sometimes with more focus on qualify, but we have no negative comment on putting more weight on quality. We'd rather wait 1 more day than finding out a quality issue later on.
- Milan, the PM, has been great and very patient despite of my screaming sometimes . He's very quick at getting back and getting things done. I was giving him bit of hard time as I wanted to have more frequent updates on what's going on, but in hindsight, I was probably getting myself involved into the project too much and was being too type A. There are a lot of things that happened behind the scene and often these are taken care of, without necessarily being updated, so it's our advice not to panic and if more frequent updates are important to you, then ask for them up front at the beginning of project. Milan is very receptive to what a client wants and changes his standard project management approach to suite the client's needs.
In summary, yes we have lost a few hairs and gained some wrinkles with our renovation. But, we had a great experience with Renocon & the team and are very happy with the final output. Without Renocon, the renovation would have been a lot harder, even a nightmare. Thanks so much, Renocon!
