Alarming situation

WHEN I embarked on the renovation of a house last July my friends told me: "Builders always take longer and cost at least 30 per cent more than they estimate." Why I thought I would be the one lucky person to escape this grisly truth, I don't know. But by December, the house was gutted and so was I.

I had always had my eye on this particular terrace of houses, next to the park where I walk my dog.

When I saw an auction board outside the end house, I found out the market price, looked over it a couple of times with a builder, who said it would cost under pounds 50,000 to do it up, and, impetuously, bought it (for pounds 1,000 less than my top price).

Although it wasn't worth a property dealer's while, I reckoned I could make it a lovely home for well under the market value.

Against all reason and advice, I didn't get a survey, nor employ an architect or a project manager to oversee the whole assignment, nor a quantity surveyor to work out a full specification and costing for the job.

Instead, I asked around for a recommended builder and, via an antiques-dealer acquaintance whose taste I admired, found one. He'd put in a kitchen for her.

I asked him if he was up to doing a whole house. "No problem," he smiled. And I believed him.

He seemed to know what he was talking about, helpfully coming up with solutions to my design conundrums. He was never condescending or wide-boyish, which would have raised my hackles earlier. He was always polite and acquiescent.

And he was cheap.

When people say "Don't go for the cheapest quote", I now know why. If they're cheap, they've probably left items off the specification and under-costed for labour. In my builder's case, he was also very late in providing the spec, it didn't come on headed paper and it was sketchy. This alone should have caused alarm bells to ring. But, and I think this is particularly the case for single women, I didn't want to confront him and have him walk out on me; the idea of having to start again and find someone else was unbearable. It is, however, exactly what I should have done: sack him before he started damaging my house, taking my money and lying.

Because of his disorganisation, I drew up a schedule. He told me that he'd had problems with his last business partner, and so couldn't get credit. He needed cash upfront. Never, ever pay cash upfront. But I did. At least, in my mind, I was paying in arrears. We'd arranged that I'd pay him in instalments, on completion of each week's work. He'd bluff each week, pointing out what he had done, and somehow I just kept paying him, although he hadn't actually completed what was on the schedule. "There's a lot of money gone in materials," he'd say. "You'll notice a big difference next week."

But progress never came. He managed to break almost every original window in the building, despite my early pleas to take special care of them. The only construction work he did (the first three months were spent on destruction: the easy bit, as everyone subsequently pointed out) turned out to be potentially disastrous.

Where he'd knocked out the walls between the two reception rooms, he inserted a supporting steel beam. We subsequently discovered it was embedded only two inches (instead of four) into the wall. The structural engineer nearly dropped the phone when I told him. "That won't do at all.

The concrete beneath could chip away and the entire beam be dislodged,"he said. Bringing the entire house down with it.

Everything was done unsystematically and badly. The asphalt roof was cut down and the guttering ripped out, without having anyone lined up to reroof it. I'd go on site and rainwater would be pouring down the new sash windows.Worst of all, many contractors were left unpaid. And so when I finally pulled the plug last December, four months after work had started, two months after work was due to be finished, and more than pounds 20,000 the poorer, I started to get mildly threatening telephone calls and letters.

My lawyer assured me that I had no liability to anyone who was subcontracted by the builder.

The exterior brick cleaner, who was owed pounds 1,750, begged to differ.

"You have had the benefit of our works and therefore you must pay."

My lawyer told me to ignore him. Next up was the pounds 2,585- short joiner, with whom I'd hitherto been on friendly terms. So it was with surprise that I received a letter in block capitals, headed: "without prejudice", although he subsequently bowed to the law.

The scaffolder had no such scruples. Knowing that it was cheaper to keep the existing scaffolding than to have a new lot erected, I'd called him to find out the hire cost. It was pounds 140 a month. I asked him to put it in writing. I got a scribbled fax on unheaded paper asking for pounds 140 a week. I queried this and we settled on pounds 300 for one month. But when he came back two months later for another pounds 600, I was better informed. I knew for sure that pounds 140 a month was a fair sum. I took a firm stance. He slammed the telephone down and sent his men round to dismantle the scaffolding. Two more windows were broken in the process.

I am now free of all the ugly legacies. I have a new builder who has done more work in six weeks than the previous one did in four months. I've learned a lot about building. I can't afford an architect or project manager, and so we're costing the job, item by item, and I'm paying as each bit is completed.

The original builder has disappeared.

Copyright 2002
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