I suppose this should be a category all on its own, just like “Photos Of The Week,” but either way, I just can’t get enough of these “high quality” renovations, where the MLS listings describe mention “fully renovated” houses with “only the highest quality finishes.”
You won’t believe what you’re about to see. Or, sadly, maybe you will.
Either way, if this is what represents quality in Toronto in 2014 for sloppy home-flippers…
The MLS listing specifically said: “Fully Renovated From Top To Bottom With High Quality Finishes.”
Then they added the most over-used, cliché statement: “Show Your Fussiest Buyer.”
Well, I’m not that fussy, and neither was my buyer, but we were both thoroughly unimpressed…
I always tell my clients that if you want A+ workmanship, you have to pay A+ prices. In Forest Hill or Rosedale, you can be assured only the best quality and workmanship, but you’re paying for it!
In a $500,000 house in Toronto, that’s an obvious flip, you should expect to see C+ workmanship at best, and that’s exactly what the following is:
First, we have the shingles outside the front of the house, where clearly the workers who were applying stucco to the exterior of the home couldn’t have possibly cared less how much of a mess they made:
Same goes for the back door, where they, for some reason, got stucco on the threshold, without getting it on the deck. I suppose they built the deck afterwards?
They also broke the window sill, and tried to reshape it with, you guessed it – stucco!
The right side is supposed to match the left side, only it doesn’t do anything of the sort.
It reminds me of something I saw on Facebook the other day…….oh yeah, this:
How about design?
And attention to detail?
Here we have either:
a) a fridge that is too short for the cabinets
b) cabinets that are too short for the fridge
Either way, this was very poorly planned:
I don’t ask much – but seriously?
How pathetic is this?
Every piece of flooring had a 3 mm gap in between the boards.
This flooring is brand new, and there’s no excuse, ie. “The floors expand and contract as the seasons go on, and it gets hot and cold.” Not when the floors are five days old…
Look up!
They left the green painter’s tape on the ceiling of the closet where they figured nobody would look, and I’m not sure that they did all that good a job painting to begin with!
In lieu of curtain rods, which cost money, they elected to use thumb tacks.
After installing quarter-round or trim atop the baseboards, you’re supposed to fill the holes, sand the excess spackle, and then paint.
They didn’t do that for a single hole.
Why? Because it’s hard?
No, because it takes time and effort…
This is not how you properly join a counter to a wall…
This one is my fave!
So I’m a fan of this kitchen backsplash – I really like it!
It’s similar to what I have in my kitchen in terms of style, just not the colour.
However, I didn’t like my kitchen backsplash SO much that I decided to cover the ENTIRE WALL in it!
Nailed it!
No pun intended…
Er……ummmm…….”Screw this!”
Ha! Come on – you love puns and wordplay, don’t you? It’s like a Toronto Sun headline up in this joint!
And last but not least, check out the quality workmanship that went into the spindles on this deck railing:
“A job worth doing, is worth doing well.”
Many, if not most of today’s speculative home-flippers don’t adhere to that old adage.
If you want quality in Toronto, you have to pay for it.
Otherwise, you’ll have kitchen backsplash up and down the living room walls, screws hanging out your railings, gaps in your floor-boards, stucco all over the place, cabinets that are too short and anything else you can possibly think of…
Mike
at 7:39 am
those are the cabinets that go above an OTR microwave not the ones that go above a fridge
Alex
at 9:31 am
I don’t get the problem with the fridge cabinets. That’s how I would have wanted it done, because in my family’s house that space between the fridge and cabinet was where we stored kitchen stuff we don’t use that often. Then you also have room to put stuff on top of the fridge without worrying about knocking it off everytime you open the cabinets. The rest of those renovations definitely had issues though.
Do you think they would have got a better price if they’d not renovated and sold it as a semi-fixer upper? Since now people are going to pay knowing they may have to re-do a lot of the renovations, so it’s basically still a fixer upper.
Chroscklh
at 3:46 pm
Where you see storage, other people with eyes see poorly fit cabinet. FYI, extend cabinet, still have place to store little used kitchen stuff. FYI, extend cabinet – door not knock off because stuff stored inside door. Least, this how done in my country – if you have fridge and not use damp sack or hole in ground
Kyle
at 4:05 pm
Even if we excuse the big gap above the fridge. There isn’t much excuse for getting a fridge that protrudes out 5 inches past the front of the counter and putting it where the ugly black sides of the fridge are visible from anywhere in the kitchen. All the cabinet doors on the right of the fridge are going to bang into the side of the fridge when you open them.
Dave
at 8:23 pm
That’s Toronto now, capital of the wanna be pro flippers….
A Grant
at 9:08 pm
At least the flaws were visible. What’s more scary is a professional looking flip with all the flaws hidden behind the drywall. I would much rather live in an older home that was renovated ten or twenty years ago by the owners.
Joe Q.
at 10:23 am
Saw a house that had been renovated, with the hallway and kitchen floors done in very large, nice tiles. But as soon as you walked on them, you could feel them flex and shift. Turns out the tiles weren’t being properly supported, either the floor underneath was not level or too flexible. Close inspection revealed that the grout between the tiles was already coming apart (cracks / chunks). That kind of mistake is difficult to recover from.
ScottyP
at 12:10 am
That Cookie Monster Cupcakes meme is the funniest thing I’ve seen all summer.
I love this blog….
AndrewB
at 8:25 pm
There’s a whole Tumblr dedicated to baking fails and “nailed its”.
Obviously the person didn’t let the cupcakes cool before icing them.
east ender
at 7:06 am
Looks like the shoddy, overpriced flips happening in East York. We currently have a repeat offender in our area, who uses the same 2 blueprints to reno by; faux stone with stucco sides, or the modern box that’s all stucco. The wanton disregard for the homeowners that live on the street of any current reno, in terms of parking and garbage appears to be in direct correlation to the quality of the job.
Chroscklh
at 3:48 pm
I like entire wall of backsplash. Something for her – easy to clean if 40 gallon pot of Borsch boil over…something for him – if you squint, look like exposed brick wall, very trendy.
Waqas Ali
at 1:59 am
good work!
http://www.waqashomes.com
lucie
at 1:55 pm
That was terrible work. I know that renovations are not easy…but this is ridiculous.
Janita Laiho
at 2:08 pm
this is such an amusing article. good to know im not the worst at renovations
man
at 9:16 am
nice
Yunior A.
at 8:13 pm
I work in the building industry, and OMG I’ve seen lots of this kind of thing. Especially if you get into the mistake someone commented having the floor shaking when walking, this can easily be plywood unlevel of missing screws when creating the floor with the plywood.
Bradco Kitchens And Baths
at 11:18 pm
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JumpOrange
at 1:29 am
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at 1:06 am
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West Hills Masonry
at 2:17 am
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