About us
Surfaces by Design is a custom design and renovation business in the GTA. It began in 2011, with the first rental property we bought and renovated ourselves — and the standard we set when it was our own money is the one the company still works to.
How it started
We were the client before we were the contractor. Our own money, our own apartment, and a finish nobody was going to check except us.
We bought our first rental property in 2011 and renovated it ourselves. It was not a business plan. It was our money and our apartment, and there was nobody to hand the awkward parts to.
That is where the habits came from. Drawings before demolition, because guessing gets expensive when you are the one paying for the guess. The whole number written down, because we wanted to know what we were in for. The wiring done by someone whose licence is on the line, because somebody else was going to live in that room.
Then people started asking who had done the work. That is the entire origin story: a family that had already worked out how it wanted a house finished, doing it next for somebody else.
What we had not expected was how differently every household answers that question. The GTA is not one kind of family, and the same four walls get asked to do completely different things — which kitchen does the real cooking, whether the table has to seat six or sixteen, whether the basement is for a tenant or for your parents.
So we ask first and draw second. Style is the easy half. The rest is how a particular household actually lives, and that is most of the difference between finishing a house and making it somebody's home.
We finish a house the way we finished that first one — because our name is on it, and the house is twenty minutes from ours.
See what we buildThe owners
A family business — which in practice means the person who quotes your job is on site while it is built, and is still the person who picks up the phone a year later. You deal with an owner at every stage, including the awkward ones.
Design
Owner & Creative Director
Danielle designs the space and runs the selections with you — layout first, then slabs, tile, cabinetry and hardware. Nothing is ordered before you have held the actual sample in your hand.
She is also the one who will tell you the tile you love is wrong for the room. It is not the popular part of the job, and she is usually right.
Drawings & selections
Build
Owner & General Contractor
Vlad runs the site and the schedule. He is on the job most days, and the eye for finish that catches the millimetre out of level is his.
If a date moves — a slab is late, an inspection slips — you hear it from him the same day, not at the end of the week.
Site & schedule
Electrical
Owner & General Contractor
Alex holds the Master Electrician licence, which is why the wiring, the lighting layout and the ESA permits never leave the family.
It is the part of a renovation nobody photographs and everything else depends on — and the part most contractors book out to whoever is free that week.
Master Electrician
Before anything is demolished
We custom build your space in our virtual simulator first, so you can step into it — the layout, the slab you picked, the height of the vanity, where the light actually falls. Then you change your mind while changing it is still free.
In the simulator it costs an afternoon. On site the same decision is a change order, a delay and a new number — so this is where we would rather have the argument.
Bookmatched porcelain picked from a sample the size of a book is a guess. Seen floor to ceiling, at the scale it will actually be, it is a decision.
By the time the quote is written, all of us have stood in the same room. Most renovation arguments begin as two different pictures of the same sentence.
Under one roof
The reason the finishes line up is boring: the same people are responsible for the drawing, the wall and the wire behind it.
Start here
The first visit is at your house and costs nothing. One of the three of us comes out, measures, listens, and tells you what your room realistically takes — in time and in money.
