Our Process | Home Renovation | Toronto

Our home renovation process comprises five phases: Discovery, Design and Development, Pre-Construction, Construction and Warranty.

Phase I – Discovery

We know that good communication is the number one way to achieve a successful home renovation project and happy customers, so from the first phone call we will be asking lots of questions to learn how we can serve you best. During our first phone call, we’ll talk about your project including both your wants and needs. We will also talk about the type of contractor you’re looking to hire. We understand that we’re not always the right fit for everyone and each project. To determine if we are the right fit, during the first call we will ask the following questions:

1. Where is your home located? We have a very specific area we serve because we want to make sure we can manage your project with a high level of customer service and attention.
2. What type of project are you looking to complete? We want to make sure we are the right fit for you, so this question is an important one.
3. Why do you want to do this project? We love partnering with our clients to help make their home a place to make lasting memories. So tell us the deep reason on why you are ready to make such a significant investment in your home.
4. When do you want to start/finish your project? Do you have a deadline of when you are looking to complete your project? Whether it is a holiday event, or an expected newborn, let us know if you have a date in mind so we can go over how long your project design, permits and build may take.
5. How much do you plan to invest? Setting the right budget is the most important part of any project. By knowing your budget, we can help come up with ideas that will provide the best value for your investment.
6. Do you have existing design plans or permits? By understanding where you are in the design process, we can determine an accurate timeline for completion of your project.

By the end of our call, we will determine if it makes sense to set up an appointment for the discovery meeting.

Our initial discovery meeting is about taking some time getting to know each other and familiarizing ourselves with your wants and needs for the project. You walk us through your home, tell us what you like about it, what you have concerns about, and what you’d like to see changed. We give you feedback based on our experience with the kinds of modifications you want to make and offer suggestions in line with your goals, which might help you maximize the utility and comfort of your home when the renovation is complete. We discuss the feasibility of your ideal budget range. While we won’t know the exact cost of your project at this point, starting this discussion and talking about some practical numbers will go a long way in helping guide you in the best way forward. Inevitably, you will have lots of questions for us and we will leave time to answer those. We will also discuss our process and the next steps.

Following the initial discovery meeting, we have enough information to prepare a free preliminary estimate for your renovation project. This estimate is based on our conversations with you, notes from our discovery meeting and a preliminary investigation conducted by our architects concerning the feasibility of your project relative to your home’s zoning restrictions. The estimate you receive at this point does not contain line-item detail, but it will address all the important elements that will give us both a good approximation of what your project will cost (within a +/-10% range) and help us decide if we should move on to the next phase of our process. We review this estimate with you and answer any questions you may have.

If the pricing is within your budget, we offer phone referrals and/or visits to one or more of our completed projects to help you decide if you want to move forward to the next phase.

Phase II – Design and Development

When Phase II begins, we ask you to sign a Letter of Intent (LOI) and provide a deposit which is typically 5% of the amount of the free estimate provided. (For those clients who come to us with drawings and/or a building permit already in hand, the LOI deposit is adjusted to 1-2% of the estimate and those elements are eliminated from the list below.) The LOI does not obligate you to work with us to complete the project. By signing the LOI, you simply agree to pay for the work involved in producing the permit drawings, the detailed quotation, and obtaining the permit. You also agree that if the final detailed quotation price is within, or less than, the +/- 10% range of the estimate provided in Phase I, you will not work with another contractor to complete the project for at least one year from the date of receiving the building permit. To be clear, the permit and drawings are your property. You paid for them. If the final detailed quotation price exceeds the +/- 10% range of the estimate, the one year waiting period is voided and you are free to work with another contractor whenever you like. You will also receive a refund of the amount of your deposit not used to pay for project development. Should you choose to work with us, the LOI deposit you paid will be applied as a credit against your first project payment.

Phase II includes the following steps:

We schedule an appointment with our architects to photograph and measure the house. We then provide drawings of the house as it exists called As Built Drawings.
We perform a thorough inspection of your home which requires making holes in walls and ceilings to inspect framing, plumbing, HVAC and electrical. Depending on the scope of work, we may also make holes in your basement floor to inspect your footings and foundation and to determine the height of the floor drains exiting your home.
Our Environmental Technician conducts a Designated Substance Survey of your home – most importantly in those areas where demolition will take place. The technician examines materials in your home, such as tile, textured ceilings, insulation, plaster, and paint for the presence of designated substances such as asbestos, arsenic and lead. We also check for mold, which is not a designated substance, but is still a potentially harmful contaminant. The technician takes samples of materials they think might contain designated substances. Those samples are analyzed, and a Designated Substance Survey Report (DSSR) is generated. The DSSR is your property and should be kept on site during the project so that anyone who is required to enter the site can examine it. City or Toronto and ESA inspectors are not required to enter your site if there is no DSSR on site.
Next our architects meet with you, review your needs and goals for the project and collaborate with you to make design suggestions. Using the results of that collaboration, the architects generate 2 to 3 different design drawings for the space called Plan Drawings. You decide what you like and don’t like and pick your “best fit” drawing to send back to the architects for tweaking. We are usually able to settle on a final design with just a couple rounds of tweaking.
We use the final Plan Drawings to generate permit application drawings. We send those over to our engineers for their markups, then we apply for your building permit. We will need to obtain a survey of the property from you to send in with the permit application. If you do not have a survey, we order one for you.
We send the permit application drawings to all our major subcontractors for the project: demolition, foundation, carpentry, HVAC, plumbing, electrical and drywall. We then meet with them on site to review the project and use their numbers to build our detailed Quotation for the project.
If there are features of your renovation which require zoning variances and there is no work around for those features that make sense for you, we shepherd your permit application through the Committee of Adjustment process. We provide background research for projects in your neighborhood, provide coaching for your interactions with your neighbors and represent you at the Committee of Adjustment hearing.
Once we obtain the permit, we adjust the detailed Quotation to reflect any alterations made to the drawings by the city or through the Committee of Adjustment process, if necessary.
Phase II culminates with the endorsement of a Construction Agreement which is basically the DNA of the construction phase of the project. We put together a very detailed Agreement which includes timing, pricing, a payment schedule, a detailed description of the Work we will do, information about our 5-year warranty, our $5,000,000 liability coverage, our $100/day non-excusable delay policy and terms and conditions of our agreement. We review the Construction Agreement with you line by line, answer any questions you may have, make any changes needed and then we both sign off. Typically, there is a deposit due when the Agreement is signed. We use that deposit to lock down the first few subtrades with firm start dates for your job.

Phase III – Pre-Construction

We assign a Project Manager (PM) to your job who will be your primary contact throughout the project. They will be performing and scheduling the work, answering questions, problem solving, updating the schedule, etc. Your assigned project manager visits the project daily and will be available Monday through Friday from 8am to 6pm to any questions you may have.

Prior to starting construction, we will schedule a Pre-Construction Meeting with you and your PM where we review all the details of your project and make sure we are all still on the same page. This meeting will give you an opportunity to feel confident in your project manager’s familiarity with the job and to ask any final questions you may have. This meeting includes everything from parking and dumpster location to accommodating plants and pets.

We set you up with an account through our cloud-based project management software which we use for pricing, tracking, scheduling, sharing drawings, photos and documents and as our primary communication vehicle throughout the project.

We generate a schedule for the project which sets out timing for the steps of the work, the city inspections required, the payment dates and dates for your selections for things like tile, appliances, flooring, plumbing fixtures, etc. The schedule is shared with you via the project management portal and is updated regularly so you can keep up with how the job is progressing and next steps.

We complete site prep which typically includes things like putting up fencing and electrical protection, situating waste bins and portable toilets, putting permit placards in the windows, posting large work drawings for the trades and putting signs on the property. Once site prep is done, we start the work.

Phase IV – Construction

We do the work. The process is transparent, responsive and interactive. We communicate with you regularly to keep you abreast of the job progress and any site generated changes we may encounter. You let us know when you have questions or if you decide to vary any of the optional features of the work. We advise how these changes affect the pricing and schedule and update the schedule periodically as required. Throughout the home renovation project, you have online access to Schedule, Payment, Allowance and Change Order tracking tools throughout the job. Close to the end we add an online “Punch List” which helps us keep the finishing touches front of mind and keep moving the project toward a timely finish.

FAQ

We get many questions about the home renovation process, especially what to expect during the construction phase. Here are our responses to some of the most frequently asked questions:

What are your work hours?
Our work hours comply with City of Toronto bylaw hours for construction which are Monday to Friday between 7AM – 7PM, Saturday between 9AM – 5PM and no work on Sundays or Statutory Holidays. In addition, your Project Manager will be available to accept and return messages during those hours. We are also available 24 hours a day for any emergency situations that may arise.
How do you track progress during construction?
In addition to regularly updating the schedule, which is shared with you, we give you weekly progress updates either through our project management portal or by phone, whichever you prefer.
What are we responsible for during construction?
Ashford Homes handles all aspects of construction, from demolition to final cleanup, with the exception of choices you need to make during construction and the materials you have contractually agreed to supply. We schedule and coordinate all the subtrades, ordering and delivery of all construction materials and waste disposal. We handle all site maintenance, from cleaning and organizing the site to salting and shoveling your sidewalks, and taking your bins to the street on garbage pick-up days. We recycle items like cardboard supply containers and metal waste. We schedule and attend all required City of Toronto, Engineering and Electrical Safety Association inspections.
How do you handle unexpected site conditions?
During the course of the job, especially during the demolition phase, we sometimes find hidden defects behind walls, floors or ceilings we remove. These discoveries and their remedies are what we call Site Generated (SG) Changes to the Scope of Work because you do not initiate these scope changes, a site condition forces them on us. When/if this happens, we make you aware of the situation and our recommendations to resolve the issue. We schedule site meetings with you to review the issue if need be. We confer with engineers and inspectors to give you solution options and consult the appropriate trades for pricing and timing. Once you have decided which option best suits your goals and budget, we schedule and supervise the necessary work. We list the added work on your Additions and Deletions Spreadsheet (ADS) and deduct the cost of the work from your 20% Contingency balance.
What happens if we want to change the scope of work after construction starts?
During the course of the job, you may decide you want to add something to or delete something from the SOW. Often these decisions are budget driven, but sometimes you just decide it makes sense to do something you were thinking about doing but just weren’t sure enough to pull the trigger during the design and development phase. Client Requested (CR) Changes to the Scope of Work are handled in much the same way as site generated changes. One main difference is since you’re initiating the change, you describe it to us. We then plan out the change, confer with trades and with inspectors and engineers if necessary and price it back to you with an estimate of how much time the change will add to the job. If the pricing and timing works for you, we schedule and supervise the work and use the ADS to track payments. If the change is a deletion of a line item, we list the deleted work on the ADS and add the value of the work to your 20% Contingency balance.
Are we allowed to visit the site during construction?
We will schedule site visits with you when we need your input for any number of reasons however you are certainly free to visit the site as often as you like, even when we have not requested it. It is important that when you do, proper precautions are taken like wearing the proper PPE and checking with us in advance to make sure no work is taking place which would create an unsafe condition for you. For example, when spray foam insulation is being applied, no one other than the technician and their helpers are allowed in the house for 24 hours. It’s also imperative that small children are not left unattended on the job site. As long as the safety box is checked, we welcome your visits. The more you see us in action, the more you’ll be happy you decided to work with us.

Phase V – Warranty

Our warranty phase begins after the job is complete; meaning the final inspections are passed, the building permit is closed and the final invoice is paid. The warranty phase ends no less than five years after it begins.

Our warranty covers labour and materials we have provided as well as our installation of any materials or equipment you have provided with one exception: our warranty does not cover appliances we may have supplied if the appliance comes with its own manufacturer’s warranty. For example, if we supply and install a Goodman furnace, the unit itself comes with a manufacturer’s 5 year warranty, if not registered, and a 10 year limited warranty if registered. So, while our warranty for the supply of Goodman units would be redundant, we will assist you with the registration process for any units we install. If there is ever a problem with any unit we supply, we warrant we will communicate with the retailer and manufacturer on your behalf. They’re more likely to deal fairly with us since we buy from them frequently and know more about how the unit is supposed to perform.

Our warranty covers repairs and replacement of specific items we supplied and installed as well as any damage to any other items or objects not covered by any other insurance. For example, if your shower leaks because we did not install the drain properly, we will not only re-install the drain and re-tile the shower floor if needed, but we will replace, prime and paint any drywall that was damaged in the ceiling below the shower. If the leaking water damaged the flooring below, we will replace the flooring. If the water leaked on, and damaged a computer, we will replace the computer. If the table the computer was sitting on got damaged, we will replace the table. And so on…

Once we have completed a home renovation project with someone, our goal is to be that someone’s renovator for life. We’re about establishing relationships with people. Relationships are who we are at our core. In fact, caring, fairness, accountability and integrity, the building blocks of good relationships, are four of our five core values. If you speak with any of our clients from ten, twelve or even 15 years ago, they will tell you one of two things regarding our warranty, either:

we fixed any problems that came up during or after the five year warranty period, or
no problems ever came up.