Vancouver handyman or general contractor review and recommendation

First published on November 27, 2010

My apartment came with an electric, fake fireplace that served no good purpose and also took up an inordinate amount of space in the room on the other side of the wall. The large box on the other side of the wall had been built specifically to cover up the small protrusion of the fireplace. The fireplace and box had to go.

Front of the fireplace before

Back of the fireplace before

Despite my best attempts to be handy around the house, I accept the fact that my attempts at this job would have resulted in more harm than good. So I hired a handyman / general contractor. Some of the people I asked for handyman recommendations said that they wouldn’t even recommend the ones they’d used. I can strongly recommend the handyman who did the work for me.

The handyman is Michael Murphy. He is based in Vancouver and does most of his work in Burnaby and New Westminster. He works under the “Yellow Van Handyman” franchise of HomeTask. I was simply walking down the street one day, saw his van parked outside of a store, and took one of the business cards attached to the outside of the van. The HomeTask website is handy in itself, because each of its contractors has a review page. Michael Murphy’s page had nothing but positive reviews.

From my experience, here are some of Michael’s qualities:

Communicative via phone and e-mail
Prompt
Friendly
Meticulous
Resourceful
Professional
Knows his stuff on a wide range of related issues
Tidy
Will explain things in an understandable way
Gave a free and detailed on-site quote before work began

The job to remove the fireplace was done very well, from the actual removal, to the wiring work, to the re-building of the wall, to the finishing and painting.

Here are the “in-progress” pictures:

Front of the fireplace in-progress

Back of the fireplace in-progress

Here are the “after” pictures:

Front of the fireplace after

Back of the fireplace after

Now it’s as if the fireplace and accompanying protrusion never existed. The process was fun and painless!

This entry is filed under Vancouver / BC / Canada and written by Peter Keung. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

One Response to “Burnaby / New Westminster / Vancouver handyman or general contractor review and recommendation”

May 26th, 2014 at 6:11 pm
Ben says:

Those are the kind of recommendations you hope for when
looking for someone to do work around your house, car, computer, boat etc.

Nothing better for a business than a genuine positive review and in this case even with ‘in progress’ pictures
to prove the point.