Dry pack contractor in Ottawa

Dry pack in Ottawa

Inside the Greenbelt, the Glebe, Centretown, Sandy Hill, New Edinburgh and Westboro have brick and stone houses from the late 1800s to the 1930s. Their floors sit on wood joists that have settled, and their bathrooms have usually been redone more than once, often with new tile laid over old. A renovation there starts with a tear-out back to the joists, a check of the framing by your contractor, and then metal lath with a scratch coat, or a mortar bed, so the new finish has a flat, solid base.

Around them, Alta Vista, Riverside Park, Bel-Air and the older parts of Nepean and Gloucester were built after the war: bungalows and split-levels with a basement under every one. Those basements are being finished, many as second units, which means a shower floor built to the drain your plumber sets in the slab and a screed through the rest so the floor is flat for tile or plank.

The suburbs, Kanata, Stittsville, Barrhaven, Riverside South and Orléans, grew fast from the 1980s on and are still growing. Their houses are at the first-renovation stage: builder showers on prefab bases replaced with a mortar bed and a linear drain, main floors redone in large porcelain, and basements finished. Downtown, the towers around Lansdowne, Little Italy, LeBreton Flats and the ByWard Market add condo work, planned around the building rules.

Ottawa winters are long and cold. An outdoor bed, on a terrace, a balcony or around a pool, is sloped so meltwater runs off before it can sit and freeze, and it falls away from the house so water never reaches the foundation.

Ottawa is a long drive from Toronto, so jobs there are planned differently from a job down the street. Send photos and the postal code with the quote request first. Ricardo prices the job from them, or asks for more photos or a site visit when they cannot show enough, and the work is booked as a block of days, grouped with other jobs in eastern Ontario where the dates allow.