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Construction Company Red Flags to Watch Out For: Part 2

Heidan Construction, a leading company construction company in Toronto, is here to let you in on construction company red flags. There are a lot of businesses out there with a less than ideal track record. We want to inform you on how to tell who’s the real deal and who’s a bad idea. In Part 1, we covered why bad communication and a lack of portfolio are bad signs in a construction company. Here are some more things to look out for.

No Respect for Your Needs

When you go in for an initial consultation with your construction company, there are a lot of things you should be looking for. Feeling like you’re being heard is a huge deal. There is almost nothing more important than feeling like you’re being listened to when working with a construction team.

Having a house built or renovated is a massive and expensive undertaking. When putting forward that much money, you need to know you can trust the people you’re paying. Don’t settle for a team that:

  • Talks over you when you try to explain your needs.
  • Tries to tell you that you don’t want something that you’re sure you do, unless they have code-based reasons for depriving you.
  • Doesn’t understand basic construction concepts. If you know more than them, without notable amounts of construction experience, that’s a bad sign. 
  • Is unwilling to change their design. If you work with a design build team and they create a design that you feel isn’t what you want, they should be willing to change it. You’re not paying your design build team to build whatever they want.

Weird Fees

When you hire a construction team, there shouldn’t be any weird side fees for their work. One way a company can scam you out of extra money is by tacking on unnecessary and substandard fees for things like certain pieces of equipment. If you’re hiring a team and see a fee that you’re unsure about, give us a call and we’ll let you know if that’s a normal fee for the practice.

Lack of Respectable Behavior

Something you should keep an eye out for is a construction team that isn’t respectable in their appearance and behavior. This is one of the biggest construction company red flags. Even in a hard work industry like construction, team members should be dressed for the job and on their best behavior. Construction sites aren’t a playground.

While it’s fairly normal for a team of friends to joke around with each other here and there. However, crude jokes, alcohol, and reckless behavior on a job-site is a huge red flag. If you’re looking for someone to get injured on your property, this is a great way to achieve that. Don’t settle for dangerous, juvenile behavior. Instead, hire professionals who have pride in themselves and their work.

If you’re looking for a consultation for your next renovation or building project in Toronto, give us a call. Heidan Construction has the experience and professionalism that you need.

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Construction Company Red Flags to Watch Out For: Part 1

When it comes time to upgrade your home – or even build a new one – you’ll need to hire trusted professionals. Unfortunately, there are a lot of construction companies that just aren’t worth their salt. Leading construction specialists in Toronto, Heidan Construction, wants to let you know what to watch out for. Here are some construction company red flags you should keep an eye out for. If you see any of these bad signs, you might want to check with other companies before hiring.

Bad Communication

A big red flag to look out for in any industry is bad communication. This can come in many forms.

  • No one at the phone. If you call for the first time, during business hours, and get an answering machine, that’s not ideal. While some businesses do take most client information through the answering machine to screen calls, it’s not the best business practice. It shows a lack of enthusiasm with client dealings and it makes communication harder for prospective clients.
  • Slow response times. If you’ve called to get a consultation and left a voicemail you should get a prompt response time. Within 24 hours, you should have been called back with a follow-up to schedule your consultation. More than 48 hours is a bad sign.
  • Telephone pinball. If the phone gets answered by a different person every time and they have no way of finding you and your needs in their records, that’s a bad sign. You shouldn’t need to take ten minutes filling in each new person on what’s already happened. This speaks of a disorganized office. If a team can’t even keep your consultation plans together, how will they complete a complicated construction job successfully?

No Portfolio

Every successful construction company will be happy to show off their successful projects. Even if they don’t have it readily available online, they should be able to show you a portfolio upon request.

The majority of quality construction companies will keep photos of their work right on their website. After all, if they have successful work, why wouldn’t they want to put it up for prospective clients to see? After all, seeing someone’s finished work is what creates most business.

If the company you’re considering has no record of their work online and they’re trying to tell you they’re experienced, find someone else. While there’s nothing sketchy about a new business having a little less record of their work, they wouldn’t lie about being a new business. A dishonest company is one you should avoid having any dealings with.

If you want to know more construction company red flags to look out for, check out part 2. However, if you’re looking for a consultation now, give us a call at Heidan Construction. We look forward to hearing from you.

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3 Ways a Second Floor is Better than an Outward Home Expansion

If you’re planning on a home renovation sometime soon and you’re unsure how to go about an expansion, here’s some food for thought. Our team at Heidan Construction is here to tell you why a second floor is better than an outward expansion. There are countless points to be made but, today, we’ll focus on the three biggest reasons.

Distance from Neighbors

When you expand upward instead of outward, you maintain your distance from neighbors. This might not seem like a big deal to you if privacy isn’t your top priority, but there are other reasons it matters. Building code in different areas requires certain distances between houses. This requirement can be affected by the size of the house, the location, how many neighbors you have, and how it’s zoned. If you expand outward, you risk breaking building codes for your area. While this isn’t going to be a problem for many people, for those who cannot expand any further outward, a second floor is the best solution. Not to mention, there are other perks to going taller instead of wider.

Maintain Your Footprint

The footprint of your house may not seem like it matters. However, there are benefits to keeping it the same. For instance, if you expand outward, your renovators will have to dig up part of the yard and create more foundation. This can be very expensive.

Foundation isn’t the only thing affected by outward expansion. Creating more space on the ground floor also means building more roof. Building a second floor will also require the rebuilding of some of your roof, but the end product is different. With an upward expansion, your roof will remain roughly the same size. An outward expansion will leave you with a much larger roof. More roof means more roof maintenance. That means more gutters to clean, more attic space that can fall victim to pests, and more surface area that can be damaged by storms or other such occurrences. The maintenance costs of roofing can get pretty expensive over the years.

Save Money

Last, but not least, expanding upward can save you money. How? There are a number of ways but the most obvious is that there’s less surface area that needs heating or cooling. When you expand outward, you have to heat a whole new section of the house. When you expand upward, heat from the first floor will rise to the second, making heating more efficient. Therefore, you save more money. Plus, with the two floors being connected, less of your addition is wall to wall with the outdoors. That means less heat leaks out or in, depending on the season. The house is more self-contained, temperature-wise.

If you’re planning a home renovation soon, no matter what expansion method you prefer, Heidan Construction is here to help. If you live in the Toronto area, give us a call and we’ll be more than happy to discuss your renovation and expansion options with you. 

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What Sets Heidan Apart From Other Construction Companies

If you’re in Toronto and looking to hire professionals in the construction industry, Heidan Construction is the number one choice for the job. You may be wondering what sets Heidan apart from other construction companies in the area. We’ve come together today to determine the qualities that make us a uniquely good choice for the job.

Getting Started

When considering a renovation becomes planning for one, getting things started with Heidan Construction is easy. A call or email can turn into a productive discussion about your future construction project. Our professionals know the quality of communication and will have you in to discuss the project in more detail before getting started. We’ll nail down all the details and ensure we have a clear idea of what you have in mind. After all, it’s your home and your satisfaction with the resulting work is the highest priority. 

Work in Progress

While working on your home, Heidan’s team of skilled construction workers will make sure to communicate with you about progress. Getting your opinion on the work in progress will ensure our work stays on the right path. Anything that is less than satisfactory to you, we’ll take very seriously. Adjustments will be made until you feel we’re accurately following the plan we put in place before starting. Stopping deviations from the plan in their tracks before they’re completed is a great way to save time and give you the home upgrade you had in mind.

Not all construction companies communicate and operate the same way. Finding a team that will work with you to get the desired results can be tricky. That’s especially true when you consider how saturated the field of construction is. There are a lot of companies and not all of them are cut from the same quality of cloth.

Finished Product

One of the things that really makes Heidan Construction shine is our finished products. We build some of the highest quality homes and offices in Toronto. If you want to see some examples of our work, check out our portfolio where you can see high res images of some of our best work. The quality of these homes that we have on display in our portfolio could easily become a reality for you.

Getting this kind of quality is not something you’ll find from just any construction company. Delivering mediocre results is not uncommon for many groups. Heidan has set a standard for itself and we won’t stoop beneath it or cut corners to meet our previously-made precedent.

Results aren’t just in the finished product, but the finished site as well. Presentation is just as important as product. Even if we built you a fantastic addition, if we left it a mess, littered with construction leftovers and trash, it would take down the beauty of the product by several notches. Unfortunately, this isn’t an uncommon occurrence within construction companies. Just know that when you hire Heidan, you get a great product and a clean work site. Turn-key is our standard for every project. So, give us a call when you’re ready to start planning your next renovation. We’ll be waiting to serve you!

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Consider Making Your Custom House a Transitional Home

If you’re in the market for a new house and you’re considering getting one custom built, you should consider getting a transitional home. However, many people don’t know what a transitional home is or what the benefits of owning one are. Heidan Construction, one of Toronto’s leading construction companies, is here to tell you a bit more about what makes transitional homes special. 

Best of Both Worlds

To start off, let’s talk about what exactly a transitional home is. A transitional home is meant to be an in-between for old and new styles. That can mean a lot of things, but the general idea is that the outside will look traditional and the inside will look modern – or however else you want it to look.

This combination of styles is incredibly handy for those of us interested in trying out newer design styles without making our house an eyesore in a traditional neighborhood. Plus, some of us like those traditional exteriors. Tudor houses, anyone?

Old Look, New Building

The reason why transitional custom homes are better than the alternatives is because they’re new. There are a lot of old houses in the GTA; why not just gut one of them and make the inside modern? The answer to this one is simple: old buildings have problems.

While old buildings may look great, they don’t always function great. Thus, here are some traditional features of old houses:

  • Sound traveling more than desired from thin walls
  • The house wasting electricity on heating because of poor insulation
  • Aged plumbing that makes the water taste like metal or that leaves trace amounts of lead in the water
  • Rodent problems due to cracks in the foundation and other such indiscrepancies

Because transitional homes are built new, you can have that traditional exterior with all of the advancements made in modern times. Get the best insulation on the market, all new plumbing, quality interior walls, and a house that’s prepared to keep you in and the natural world out.

A Unique Transitional Home

The best part about getting a custom transitional home is that its completely unique to you. Furthermore, when using an old house in good condition, you’re limited to the existing structure. A custom transitional home allows you to work with our design team and come up with a design that feels right for you.

That can mean anything you want it to. Figuring out where you’d most like the bedrooms to be, making the bathroom as big as you like, turning the gables into a loft, open concept design, or anything else is completely up to you. We will design the entire home around you and your needs. That’s much preferred to trying to fit your needs into an existing space.

If you’re interested in a custom transitional home or want to explore other home-building options, give us a call. We look forward to working with you and making your custom home-building experience a great one.

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Why Hiring Heidan Makes Construction Simple

If you’re planning to hire out for a construction project, you’ll want to choose a company that does what you need and no less. Unfortunately, finding a company that will meet and exceed your expectations these days can be tricky. There are so many companies competing with one and other and it’s difficult to tell who the best choice is. We’re taking some time today to go over what it is that makes Heidan the best choice for construction. How does hiring Heidan make construction simple? Here’s how:

We Listen

One of the most important things a construction company can do is listen to what their client needs. A construction company who doesn’t listen – really listen – to the needs and vision of their client will end up serving a finished product that falls short of success.

We take the time to listen to our clients and really get to know and understand what they need. When you hire Heidan, you can trust that we will give you a finished product that meets your needs and exceeds your expectations.

We Work Hard

Listening to a client’s needs is important, but won’t be enough all by itself. What makes a good construction company is taking the information they have and really putting it to use. There are two main parts to this. 

For one, we at Heidan take the understanding of what you need and we make it happen. The ability to make sure things actually get done, and in a timely manner, is not something every construction company possesses. 

The second thing is the knowledge to do it well. Knowing what a client wants and putting in the effort to make it happen is only helpful if you know your stuff. Heidan has nearly 20 years of experience in the industry. Over these two decades, we’ve been building our clients buildings they can be proud of.

We Communicate

Something that we take pride in at Heidan is our communication abilities. Many construction companies will get to work and do the whole job without consulting with their clients. It’s important to us at Heidan to check in and make sure our clients are happy with the choices we’re making. We also put an emphasis on friendliness, communicating with clients in a way that feels natural and comfortable. 

We Tie Loose Ends in Construction

Perhaps one of the things that makes us truly stand out from other companies is our ability to tie up loose ends. A lot of companies finish a building and leave behind a mess for the owners to clean up. At Heidan, we firmly believe that it is part of our job to leave you with a turn-key property. There will be no trash, no nails, no scrap wood, and no other kind of mess left behind for you to deal with. It isn’t your job to clean up after us.

If you’re interested in choosing Heidan Construction for your next project, give us a call. We look forward to setting up a consultation. If you have any questions, we’re more than happy to help answer them.