PLANiT Builders Ltd

A neighbour recommended Planit Builders. We are happy with our new garage. They are very professional. The site coordinator John Papageorgiou was always on top of things and keeping us informed through the construction. We recommend Planit Builders. Reliable, good quality and in time.

We hired Planit Builders June 10, 2015 to build our basement and garage.

The projects cost over $95,000.00 and took until July 20, 2016 to complete. Over 13 Months!!

The Estimated Completion for the garage was Originally Dec. 2015, but was changed to February and cost $34190.84

The Basement cost over $65,000.00 for 790 sq ft.

And we did all the painting, supplied door knobs, lights, plumbing fixtures and all appliances!

Just the planning alone took more than 8 months! There were weeks when nothing happened.

Finally constructions began end of March 2016!

Then the fun really began.

We had to pay extra for a full size kitchen, which is what we requested in the first place.

We had to pay extra to have the electrical panel moved. Also requested at the beginning.

We had the place rented for July 1st, 2016.

Suite still wasn’t done!

Luckily the new tenants didn’t have to be out of their house until July 20.

The tenants did need to move some stuff before the 20th so they put stuff in our garage.

Just before July 1st we discovered several problems. The kitchen cupboards were measured wrong and we had to put in a smaller sink. Not what I wanted at all.

The only sink that would fit that wasn’t a special order was from Ikea. However Ikea North America no longer had stock and wasn’t getting any more. We have a friend from Norway ask his father to pick one up at Ikea there and Planit would have it shipped to Canada. Took them over a week just to arrange the pick-up, and a month to pay our friend back! The sink was being installed the day our tenants moved in.

They also measured the laundry room wrong. We had to return the washer and dryer we had bought and get a compact size.

Again, not what we wanted at all for the suite.

Especially since compact machines are double the price.

Since we couldn’t put a double garage in the back because of city bi-laws, we used up some of the credit to put a cement foundation for our future hot tub as well as the electrical. The electrical had to be redone 3 times. The water pools in the corner of the pad by the wall of the garage.

To save some money, we opted to paint. Really bad idea! 3 three times that we took off to paint the walls or area was a mess. We finally got it all done just before the renters moved in.

Communication with this company other than Beau Nychka is abysmal. Calls to their accountant took weeks. Long gaps in the planning stage. The billing is vague, wasn’t sure what was included and what wasn’t. didn’t find out we needed a curtain rod until the very end as one isn’t included.

Bottom line, only use this company if you have an endless amount of time, money and patience. Other wise look elsewhere.

It would have been less work and hassle for to hire the trades myself to get it done.

Paula & Rob Paradis

We hired Planit Builders in May 2015 to complete a legal basement suit in our home. As per contract, our suite was to be completed end of October. Red flags popped up quickly that our basement would not be completed in time. From day one we had nothing but problems. They came to do our site measure and when they presented us with a floor plan it had a wet bar, not a kitchen like a legal suite would have. We had to correct them on this and seemed like just a small miscommunication. We were told our plans would go into permitting with the city as soon as possible. A couple weeks later we were called and told they needed to come back to do more measurements of our house. The city had apparently changed the rules and they now needed to have the full measurements of our upper floor and our property with all buildings on it (house garage etc.). Multiple times we were told our job had been submitted for permitting only to hear from someone else that it had not. Additional charges came up that weren’t including in the contract. The basement was gutted when they came to do the original pricing and measure so there was no surprises. We were assured MULTIPLE times that they allowed for more than enough concrete breaking in the contract and not to worry. 1 week before our basement was scheduled to be finished we had our FIRST meeting with the site supervisor. They found a few problems with our floor plan that they were able to adjust. Things such as where light switches were located, and flush mount lights under bulk heads. They chalked this up to having a new designer who was still “green”. We let them start working against our better judgement. The MINIMAL framing that was started was off compared to the blue prints; we lost 2 feet in our kitchen. They also had doors opening INTO bulk heads. The entire kitchen and bathroom were planned to be in an area with 6.5’ ceilings due to bulk heads. This is the first basement I have done and I am NOT a professional, hence why I was paying PRIEMIUM price for “professionals”. I was told I would be walked through the planning process with the designer which I was looking forward to. I have still Never met the “designer”. My wife met him once. The communication from day one was unacceptable from any standards. Never knowing what is going on and never having phone calls returned. We decided to fire Planit builders and break our contract with them because they had already broken contract by not starting our job on time let alone finishing it. Trying to fire them was as hard as working with them. No one could give us answers and they claimed we owed them more money, despite the fact we had over 10,000 invested already and nothing but minimal framing started which was wrong. We spoke to two different owners of Planit Builders and not one of them would even come see the work that had been done. We told them if they could come and show us where the money was spent then we would pay but they couldn’t be bothered to show up. What little framing they had completed all had to be ripped down due to being wrong. I was at the point of driving down to Calgary and back in the same day to sit at their main office until an Owner would meet with me. Luckily I finally got a hold of the other owner and he was more willing to get things closed and part ways. Approximately 4 months after firing Planit Builders and getting signed papers that they would not come after us for money (as I had read in other reviews had been a past problem) we received a phone call. The Edmonton Project Manager called us asking about the windows they had dropped at the house. He stated we hadn’t paid for them and he was wondering about picking them up. We let him know they were now installed in our new basement suite and about our written agreement with Planit Builders. He said he was going to look into it and we haven’t heard from him since. I was shocked at the lack of professionalism from every aspect of this company.

I got financing through PLANiT Builders for my basement renovation. Their pricing system is very cool and they priced my entire basement right there in the sales meeting.

Now, it did take them a while to get organized. I'm not sure whether it's because of the Calgary market being so crazy or because our first project manager was going through a difficult time in his life. We didn't get too upset because our Neighbors hired another company and it took them over a year to finish their basement!

Even though our basement has taken longer than expected, once we got a good project manager things went smooth and we are impressed with the quality of work. They pay attention to the smallest details and everything has been done to the highest standard.

So at the end of the day, even though our basement took longer than we expected we are still happy with the end result.