Ottawa moms and dads, have you tried Jiffy on Demand yet? I just used their services for the first time. Jiffy is a new app, available here in Ottawa as well as in Toronto. It’s basically like UBER but for a handyman. Pretty much whatever you need done around the house, you can call it up immediately from the Jiffy app. I’m talking snow removal, yard work, car detailing, painting, plumbing, appliance repair, carpet and upholstery cleaning, electrical and more…heck they will even assemble your IKEA furniture!

There are a few on demand services that seem tailor made for Ottawa. I’m particularly intrigued by the mobile tire change! No more waiting in those early morning Costco tire changing lines for me. Not to mention the snow removal. I really wish I knew about this app last month when we were getting those huge dumps of snow.

So here’s the current situation with my family and our house. We bought this house when we moved to Ottawa a few years ago. It’s a sweet, 1950’s style home. The former owner was a single, elderly lady who had been living alone for more than 30 years. The house was in pretty good condition, but super out-dated and there were certainly some questionable colour choices.

Big renovations are not currently in our budget, but fortunately my husband Leo has proven himself to be super handy around the house. Over the past few years, he has knocked down a wall, tiled a backsplash, done a whole bunch of painting and landscaped the yard. Pretty amazing right? BUT…. and there’s a HUGE but – Leo’s handiness comes at a price. You see, my husband is a medical resident. So he is gone A LOT. It seems like he’s always at the hospital and really has very little time to spend with his family, let alone be fixing up our house.

Now, our main bathroom is one of the very, out-dated rooms of our house. We have been itching to renovate it since we first moved in. The bathroom has some seriously funky and GREEN wall paper and tile. Leo has just simply not had the time to tackle this project. So, I thought I would surprise him and get the job started. SURPRISE Leo!

I downloaded the Jiffy app, and selected “Painting”, then in the comments section I asked if anyone could remove my bathroom wallpaper. I gave them a time and date that would work for me, Five minutes later I had a text from the painter/handyman saying he would be there Wednesday morning. All of the services provided by Jiffy give an up-front service fee or hourly price, so I knew what to expect cost-wise. And, all of the tradespeople have a 4.5 rating (at the very least) and are vetted by Jiffy.

So, on Wednesday a nice man by the name of Wayne showed up and got to work on our stripey, green bathroom. He worked away hard for 3 hours and did a great job. The job was billed automatically to my credit card, and we waved goodbye to Wayne. So easy.

What wasn’t easy – was this job. That wall paper was stubborn. It had probably been up there for decades and there was some serious glue involved. I’m glad this was not a task that consumed by husband’s weekend.

You saw the BEFORE photo, well here is the AFTER photo…. HAHAHAHA looks awesome right? Turns out there is some serious aqua green colour under that wall paper. Hmmm, looks like I might have to use the Jiffy app again soon! In the meantime, we will be forced to enjoy this green abstract painting while sitting on the toilet.

Now that we have completed the first step to renovating our bathroom, the hope is that it will soon look like THIS! White and bright! Well, that’s the plan anyways. Stay tuned, when we eventually get this bathroom done I will have to do a completed renovation post.

BONUS: Leo was very surprised, and super pumped that he didn’t have to be the one devoting his day to bringing down the wallpaper.