Our GTA Patio Stories

I was standing in the half-demolished kitchen, coffee gone cold, sawdust in my hair and the neighbour's dog barking every time the jackhammer hit a slab. It was 7:05 a.m., the first morning the crew showed up after a week of radio silence from the last contractor. My toddler was asleep upstairs, which felt like the smallest miracle of the week. I had three quotes spread out on the table—one for about $40,000, one for $75,000, and one for $110,000—and none of them seemed to

I was crouched on the kitchen floor, half a drawer of 1990s oak cabinetry at my feet, reading the third quote for the day and feeling stupidly close to crying. The demolition had already started next door—sledgehammer thumps from the contractor who showed up for a different job—and my own contractor had stopped answering texts three days earlier. My kid was playing with a dump truck on our cold basement concrete like it was the only normal thing left. The quotes sat in a