Home Renovation Services Ottawa

Zoning By-law 2026-50 has been in force since January and permits up to four dwelling units on every serviced residential lot, with secondary suites allowed as of right in almost all residential zones and no extra parking required. Zoning is only half of it: the unit still needs a building permit and still has to meet the Ontario Building Code on ceiling height, fire separation, a separate entrance and an egress window in every bedroom. We survey the basement first and tell you which of those your house already satisfies before you spend anything on drawings.

We arrange all of it, which is why you would call one company and not four. Carpentry, framing, drywall, tile, flooring and finish are our own crew. Everything the province licenses goes to the trades it licenses: all electrical work is performed by an ECRA/ESA-Licensed Electrical Contractor who files the wiring notification, and anything gas-fired by a TSSA-certified gas technician. We bring them in, schedule them and stand behind the result, so you get one contract, one invoice and one number to ring rather than four schedules to hold together.

Usually not, and this is where advice copied from Toronto goes wrong. Most Ottawa houses built after about 1960 already have 7'6" or more under the joists, and the code minimum for a habitable basement is well under that. Underpinning only comes up in older stock with real headroom problems, and even then benching the footing is often the cheaper answer. We measure the height at the lowest duct and beam, not in the middle of the room, and tell you which of the three you are in.

It depends on the work. Finishing a basement as living space needs a building permit and a second dwelling unit certainly does, while swapping a kitchen like for like often does not. Permanent wiring needs a notification to the Electrical Safety Authority on top of that, filed by the licensed contractor doing it. We go through the whole list at the visit and the quote names every permit your job needs, who is pulling it and what the fee is, so none of it turns up as a surprise halfway through. Nothing that needs a permit gets started without one: the inspection record is what a buyer’s lawyer asks for years later.

Not honestly, no. A renovation price is decided by things nobody can see down a phone line: whether the wall is load-bearing, where the stack and the panel are, how much spare capacity that panel has, what the joists allow, and what is behind the plaster in a house of that age. We come out, measure, and give you one itemised written price split across labour, materials, trades and disposal. If something nobody could have seen turns up behind a wall, you see the cost and approve it before we carry on.