When we purchased our home, we noticed that the wood-burning fireplace in our living room needed repair. All the tiles in the floor of the fireplace were cracked. We had a local handyman remove the broken tile, and had been living with an open pit for several months while we searched and searched for a contractor who could help us. We were looking for someone who could make the fireplace safe to use, and beautiful - since it is the focal-point of the whole room. There were a lot of aspects to the job, because the brick supports under the fireplace also needed some work, the wooden mantle was in need of repair and the inside of the fireplace needed repair and repointing. We talked to MANY local contractors and Classic Construction was the only one that seemed to understand all of the aspects of the project right away, and had the experts on staff to do all of the necessary work. Mark Woodcock, one of the foremen at Classic, came out to the house to diagnose the project and prepare an estimate - and it was apparent from the start that he knew what to do. Many other vendors we spoke to seemed to need us to lead the conversation, explaining what we thought needed to be done to repair the fireplace, while Mark took one look and told US what he thought needed to be done. This gave us great peace-of-mind right off the bat. We explained to Mark that we wanted to be sure that whoever did the work would do a top-quality job, since the fireplace is such a main feature of the room. Ian Woodcock (the owner) sent us the estimate via email 2 days later (as promised) and everything we had discussed was in the estimate - i.e. no aspects of the project were forgotten. Ian told us that he'd be putting his master mason on the project since he understood that it would be a lot of precision work that needed to be good-looking, structurally secure and safe for use. Their estimate was somewhat higher than others we'd gotten. When I asked about this, Ian explained that his company doesn't sub contract or use day-labor, and that they do what it takes to deliver quality work. (Now at the end of the project, I can see that his estimate was higher, because he fully understood the work that would be necessary to achieve the results we were after). We were ready for the work to begin about 3 weeks later and Ian came out to the house with Bishik his master mason, just to introduce us and to talk about the details of the job. We had picked out some natural limestone tiles for the hearth area, and wanted a very specific tile pattern - so we'd mapped out what tiles to place in which spot. This really meant that there needed to be no mishaps when cutting the tiles, since each one was unique. We went over the exact tile pattern we wanted and inspected the condition of the base structure of the fireplace and the brickwork supports under the work area. Bishik started work the next day, and we can't say enough about his craftsmanship and professionalism. He paid attention to every detail, and did things with stone that I truly wouldn't have thought possible, including cutting recesses in firebrick so that our ash pit cover could be flush with the surface of the firebox. He hit the perfect balance of working independantly and calling things to our attention when appropriate - so we really had peace of mind throughout the whole project. We felt like he had everything under control, and that if something came up that needed our input he would grab us to discuss. He worked on the project for about one and a half weeks, with Ian stopping in occaisionally to make sure everything was going well. There was no sense of trying to rush the work, and everything was done to our liking. He rebuilt the foundation for the fireplace, levelled and installed firebrick in the base of the fire-box (which had previously been TILED...no wonder it cracked), repaired and repointed the brick supports under the fireplace, repointed the walls of the firebox, custom cut and installed all of the limestone tile, including the elaborate border, rebuilt the footings of the existing mantle and replaced the shoe moldings in the room, painted the surround and all of the woodwork in the mantle, repaired some cracked joints in the mantle itself, and sealed all of the limestone work in the hearth. My wife and I are both artists and notice miniscule details about everything. I can only say that Classic Construction did everything we wanted FLAWLESSLY, and went above and beyond to do things that we would not have imagined, like custom coloring the clay mix between the fire brick because they thought it would improve the look of the finished project. Words really can't describe how conscientious, diligent and detail oriented these guys were, and what a pleasure it was to work with them.