You’ve done it.  

You’ve made what is likely the biggest purchase in your life: a home.  Whether it’s tucked away in a suburb, or mile-high in one of the condo buildings that now dominate our skyline, you are a homeowner and this blog is for you.  Because now that you’re swimming in laundry lists telling you how to care for your home… it's time for something different.

This is a blog about the word ‘good’.  A word that, in the fear-dominated renovation world, you don’t hear often.  After completing scores of interviews with both customers and contractors, this blog simply asks the question:  What does it mean to be a good contractor?  How do we, as customers, hire them?  And how do we even begin to tackle the wild-west reno landscape?

"Tear it all down"

If you are at all into the renovation culture, this is a familiar call to action.  You can't watch an episode of HGTV's hit renovation show, Holmes on Homes, without hearing it. The scene is always the same. As Mike Holmes surveys yet another customer's disaster renovation, Holmes' catch-phrase sparks a Rocky-esque reno montage. "Move out of the house", "who were these yahoos", and, of course, the now ubiquitous "make it right."  

The show’s success lies in the simplicity of the fairytale. It begins with the heart-wrenching story of a family losing their home, their castle. Then Holmes appears as the white (t-shirted) knight in shining coveralls, out to save the castle from peril.  And because all good stories need a villain Holmes pits himself against the nebulous “bad contractor”.  

And really, can you blame him?  Ask any homeowner or tenant in the GTA and, if they can’t tell you of a personal reno-gone-bad story, they can certainly name a friend or family member that has one.  No one can argue that the situation exists; there are bad contractors out there.  The real question after seven-or-so seasons of syndication is, so what?

In search of a solution

While it makes great television, tearing it all down for tens of thousands of dollars is a solution that, for most moderate-income families, is simply inaccessible.  

Our next hope is to then turn to other forms of protection like insurance.  But these measures only help after things go wrong. They do nothing to dodge the nightmare that the customer is out to avoid in the first place.  

License checks are proactive and are an excellent indicator that a contractor plays by the rules, yes.  But if it’s true, as one contractor recounts, that “you can get a Metro Toronto License after a five-minute conversation at city hall,” then does licensing really have anything to do with quality?  Is a good contractor someone with a license?

Let me be clear. All customers should look for licensing, insurance, WSIB and a valid business number when renovating (at minimum.)  But after countless hours of interviews with customers and contractors, new home owners and seasoned DIY’ers, we’ve found that identifying a good contractor is a lot more complex than you’d think.  And also, that there are many more out there than mainstream media would have you believe.

“Tradition and ethics cannot be licensed”

As one of our contractor advisory team told me once: “Tradition and ethics cannot be licensed.”  That is what the Good Contractor blog exists for.  Not to give you another laundry list of todos that promise the heartache free reno, but rather to figure out what’s truly ‘good.’  To tell you stories from real customers and contractors in order to answer that question.

All we ask is for you to consider this: maybe "tearing it all down" isn’t the answer.  Perhaps what needs to be torn down are your preconceptions of what makes a good contractor.

If you can do that, then welcome to the conversation.