My wife and I cannot say enough good things about Dale and the Wolfhound team, truly. They are friendly, cordial, and on time on site everyday at 7 am when working here and always leave a clean work site before leaving at the end of the day.
We had been trying to get our renovation off the ground for a year and went through 2 contractors and about 10 interviews before meeting Dale. Before him we were definitely losing faith that we'd ever be able to get this done and our "forever home" dream was going to die.
Right off the bat, the thing that is apparent about Dale is that he treated this project and our home as if it were his own, it was very personal for him. The level of care and consideration he had for us throughout as well as being accommodating to a few circumstances we put in front of him (we decided to live in the basement while the renos were going on above us to save a few dollars) has made this process far easier and as stress free as possible - I think we can agree no renovation is "stress free" but having someone who recognizes this and is empathetic to that point, decreases that stress tenfold.
From day one he referred to the project as "a partnership" and we've felt like partners working toward the same goal throughout. It was never once a Dale vs Us situation, even the most uncomfortable conversations were easily and calmly discussed over a beer, pizza or cup of tea (Dales favourite).
Another thing we have to say about Dale, which we didn't find with anyone else was his honesty. Everyone we met tried to 'win' the business by telling us this was an 8-week job open and shut.
Dale came into our initial meeting and said "look I can tell you 8 weeks like everyone else to try and win your business but I'd rather be realistic and honest with you and then we're on the same page and if we come in early everyone is happy". At the initial meeting Dale said to us to expect 5-6 months total timeline for the project but he would aim to get it done sooner if possible. Due to a few hangups around appliances, finishing materials delayed by COVID and sub trade errors that we brought in on our own, the job took right to the max time frame, but barring those delays from our end we would have likely been done sooner.
Regarding budget, we ended up pushing about $20-30k over our initial planned budget with all of that being from adjustments and upgrades my wife and I made along the way, not under estimations from Dale - he was truly right on the money (pun intended) the whole way through.
Any of the "budget breakers" that came up along the way were typically averted in the most economical way. Also, regarding his budget planning, in the grand scheme of quotes we received he came in about $30k cheaper than the next closest quote and $150k cheaper than the most ridiculous quote we received (which included $2000 toilets haha). So we've really felt like he understands the true costs of materials and labour.
No one believes a review that is 100% glowing and we know those are few and far between so, the only area that we felt needed some improvement was communication and keeping us in the loop in the earlier phases of the project. We had email and text message conversations, but Dale is a hands on business owner and his focus is providing the best product/end result, that sometimes came at the sacrifice of clear communication and missed messages in our correspondence we were looking for a response on. Dale is the first to admit this and after discussions on the matter he did make significant strides to ensure we had regular meetings and check ins.
