Doing It Yourself: how I was scammed by a cowboy builder - and how to protect yourself
TL; DR: do a DIY course
I’ve recently lost over £20K to a cowboy builder, and it’s made me wonder if there’s anything that we can do to protect ourselves from scammers. I thought I’d write a newsletter on the extent to which legal and financial systems are weighted in favour of rogue traders; and on many women’s response, which is to sigh, roll up our sleeves, and bloody well do it ourselves.
First, my sob story. Last spring, after the inquest into my husband’s death concluded, the company with whom we had life insurance finally made a payout. I wanted to spend a bit on things in the house, for my daughters. We’d only just moved into our house when my husband died, so for the previous eighteen months, we’d been tripping over boxes in our grief, with many elements of the house only half-working. I wanted to give over a corner of the garden to the kids, so I built a climbing frame from a kit, and paid a reputable local company to do some other bits, including putting up a little summerhouse as a hang out zone for my girls and their friends.
I became friendly with one of the builders on that project, who told me that he’d been very unwell during the pandemic, but that he was now recovered enough to set up again as an independent tradesman, with a specialism in bathroom fitting. Two of my daughters’ bedrooms had small en-suite bathrooms which didn’t function, and, with them all approaching teenagehood, I thought it would be a nice treat for them to have new, working bathrooms of their own. Also, the house had an ancient inefficient boiler that was much too small for it, and which didn’t allow two taps to be running at once, so I wanted to get that replaced.
The builder inspected the site and gave me a quote, which was favourable in comparison with other builders who also quoted for the same project. He showed me hundreds of photos of his past projects and his website and Instagram and glowing online reviews. I wanted to accept his quote, as I’d liked the work he’d done on the summerhouse, but I was a bit wary. So I did a bit of online research into how to protect myself, and how to protect this life insurance money, which felt extremely emotionally weighty. Blogs advised using someone who came recommended (which this guy did), and who had positive online reviews (ditto). It suggested paying for as many materials as possible myself, so that, if everything went tits-up, at least I would own the fixtures and fittings, and could hire a new builder to install them. So I purchased all the bathroom furniture and fittings, including the tiles, grout, adhesive and flooring. However, the builder told me that he’d already bought the new boiler and cylinder for me, so I paid him upfront for that (which obviously I now massively regret), as well as paying him a deposit for the bathroom work, and I also paid him a deposit for restoring the original floorboards across the first floor of the house, which would take place a couple of months after the bathroom work. Blogs also advised drawing up a detailed contract, so the builder and I had a lot of back-and-forth emailing, in which I repeatedly added and edited elements of the contract, hoping that this would protect me in case the work stalled for any reason. He was receptive and calm about this process, so I started to relax.
Work started, and at first everything seemed fine. I’m not a plumber (obviously) and I was busy with work, so I mostly kept out of his way, but when I stuck my head around the bathroom doors, everything seemed in order. I paid the first two weekly invoices. But then, I started to get worried. He’d said the work would take 2 weeks, but we were into the 3rd week, and one bathroom was barely started, whereas the other bathroom was ridden with (what seemed to inexpert me) small problems: a floor-standing bath tap which didn’t flow at all (he blamed it on poor water pressure, but I asked him to check for kinks in the inlets, and he found one, and it was fixed); a basin tap which was plumbed incorrectly so that hot flowed from cold (and vice versa); a shower tray installed the wrong way round; a shower kit which should have been flush with the wall, but which protruded and was wonky; a wobbly bath. When I pointed out these things, he seemed mildly exasperated - like I am, when I’m in the middle of painting a wall, and my kids ask why the paint is patchy and if it will always be that way. He assured me that the bathrooms were simply unfinished, and that all those “tiny details” would be remedied in due course. I asked when the boiler and cylinder would materialise, and he gave me a date. So I paid the third invoice, which meant I’d paid the quoted amount in full.
The following week, things got much worse. He’d assured me that everything would be finished by the end of that week, but throughout the whole project, he’d barely worked any full days: turning up at 10am and leaving at midday, or not turning up at all, pleading childcare or ill health (his own, or his dog’s). By the Wednesday, I told him that I couldn’t see how the bathrooms could possibly be finished by the end of the week. The next day, he asked me to take a seat in (my own) kitchen, and gravely, regretfully, informed me that he’d discovered a deep-seated and extensive infestation of dry rot across the whole of the top floor of the house. This made it impossible, he said, for him to do any further work on the bathrooms until it was remedied. BUT, he said, I was lucky, as he’d worked in timber preservation in heritage buildings in the past, and he would be able to clear his diary over Christmas - two months away, at that point - in order to rip out all the “rotten” early-eighteenth-century floorboards and replace them some sort of sheet material, for a special price of £8,000. Lucky, lucky me.
That night, I couldn’t sleep. I’ve spent a lot of my working life researching and writing about eighteenth-century space and place, and I feel incredibly fortunate to be living in a house dating from Queen Anne’s reign, with most original features intact. Since Pete died, I’ve found it restoring to be able to care for - and to restore, at the same time that it is restoring me - a beautiful old house. It made me feel ill to contemplate ripping out a whole floor of wood dating from c.1700. So I spent the night googling dry rot, and I crept up into my daughter’s bathroom with a torch to look at the supposedly rotten boards. They just looked like old floorboards to me - and rather lovely ones, at that. The next morning, the builder showed up to clear out some of his tools, and I overheard him talking on the phone to a colleague, who was evidently engaged in another job that was running woefully behind schedule with a disgruntled client. “Is there anything we can make up to tell her, to justify the delay?” I heard my builder say. “Like, anything that could be rot or anything?”
Fuck. I was furious. I called a timber preservation specialist, who came over and proclaimed, as I suspected, No Dry Rot (just rather beautiful old floorboards). I told the builder that I wanted him to finish the bathrooms immediately, and install the boiler and cylinder, but that I was cancelling the future work on the 1st floor floorboards, and I certainly didn’t want him to rip out the boards on the top floor, as he’d proposed. He told me that he would instruct a solicitor to sue me for breach of contract. I suggested mediation instead of going to court, and I found a mediator, and had a lengthy phone call with him. The builder wasn’t interested. I looked at the work that had been done on the bathrooms, and what remained to be done, and I had that dreadful sinking feeling of “oh shit, this is much worse than I thought”. A few of the problems: because the shower tray was in the wrong way, when the shower was turned on, the water didn’t drain and flowed straight out onto the floor. The wall-hanging basin was blatantly wonky, and wobbled off the wall precariously. The bath wasn’t secured to the floor and tipped up whenever anyone got in or leant on it. In one bathroom, the builder hadn’t been able to work out how to install the bath waste, so he’d CUT A HOLE IN THE BATH, and fixed a waste pipe that ran ON TOP OF THE FLOOR across the room into the shower. The shower was installed much too low, so that no-one taller than 5 foot 3” could use it. The bath waste on the top floor flowed up, rather than down. The tiling was a disaster. It was all a disaster. And of course, there was still no boiler and cylinder.
I wrote to the builder and his solicitor, listing what was wrong; and evoking our contract and my right to cancel if the work was defective, and asking for a refund to remedy it. The builder flatly denied there was anything wrong with his work, and demanded that we appoint an independent expert to assess it. I gladly agreed, phoned Citizens Advice and Trading Standards, who recommended a Trusted Trades company about 60 miles away. The builder agreed to the inspection, and the Trusted Trades company conducted a report (which I paid for) which concluded that it was some of the worst plumbing work they’d seen in 30 years, and that everything would have to be ripped out and started again. Most of the bathroom fittings, including tiles and flooring, which I’d supplied would have to be repurchased. I added up what I’d spent so far and it came to over £21,000 in money I’d paid to the builder for work done, costs of bathroom fittings that would have to be resupplied, deposits for the future work which now wouldn’t happen, costs of the surveys I’d had to commission, and the price of repairing the damage that had been done by a major leak that the builder had caused. I realised that the online advice of paying for the bathroom furniture myself, to protect myself against a builder taking money upfront for “materials” and then disappearing, didn’t actually protect me from the scenario I faced: a builder who had ruined all the bathroom fittings beyond rescue. But I clung to the hope that I still had our contract, and would be protected by that, and I told him that, although I’d much rather come to an agreement out of court, I would make a court claim against him if necessary, to recuperate some of my sunken costs.
A few months passed of back-and-forth communication with the builder’s solicitor - each email taking up precious hours/days of my life - in which we negotiated a (much smaller) sum than the full £21K to be repaid and a plan of monthly instalments. I had submitted a claim for legal representation under my house insurance policy, but, three months later, the insurance company is still considering it and I’ve heard nothing. And then, last Friday, I received a letter from the government’s Insolvency Service, informing me that the builder had filed for bankruptcy. That was it. He said he had no assets. I wouldn’t be getting a penny back.
I’ve done some online digging , and it seems that he’s done this at least once or twice before: taken on a job for which he’s not skilled, lied about his credentials and experience, messed it up to a dangerous extent, conjured up some excuse for why it’s gone wrong which requires the client to fork out even more money and then, when asked for a refund - even when instructed to pay a refund by the small claims court - he’s declared himself bankrupt.
When I was young, I thought that going bankrupt was a last resort, a career-ending move. I had no idea that it’s possible to do what I’ve learned is called ‘phoenixing’; that a builder can go bust and rise from the ashes to go back into exactly the same line of business that he’d failed at before; even setting up and running a company with a stooge as the nominal director.
Over the last few months, I’ve berated myself for not having done more to protect my money and home. I wish I’d paid for the building work on a credit card. I wish I’d checked that he had insolvency insurance (I’d checked that he had public liability insurance, but I didn’t know about insolvency insurance). I wish I’d refused to pay for the boiler upfront. I wish I’d commissioned someone else, someone affiliated to a professional body. I wish I’d checked the quality of his work more minutely on a day-to-day basis. But I was used to employing honest, competent tradespeople, whom I could trust to get on with the job while I go about my life - and I’m not a plumber! So I’m not sure I’m actually qualified to assess the quality of plumbing work while it’s ongoing. And I’d put in place so many of the recommended protections for clients - a detailed contract etc - and none of it did me any good against his declaration of bankruptcy. Even if I had thought to check whether he had a history of this kind of behaviour, the Insolvency Register only holds details of individuals for three months.
So often, advice is given to consumers about how to protect ourselves from cowboy builders - as if cowboy builders are an inevitable fact of life, like adverse weather. But this whole situation reminds me of advice given to women about staying safe from violent men, while walking or running outdoors at night. I’m angry about living in a world in which deceitful, predatory men are treated as an unstoppable force, around whom we have to shape our own behaviour, rather than individuals whose malignancy is not adequately prevented or punished by our country’s legal and financial systems. Cowboy builders repeatedly evade having to bear the consequences of their duplicity and their recklessness with other people’s time, money, property and energy, because our country’s insolvency laws allow them to do so over and over again. This seems to very wrong to me.
The aftermath: doing it yourself
About 5 years ago, I did a term of community evening classes in DIY. The class was 95% composed of women, who were all, as one attendee put it, “sick and bloody tired of paying charlatan tradesmen to mess up my house.” Like many women, I’d grown up thinking of DIY as a thing that men did. I didn’t believe that men had any innate aptitude for it, but I did assume that it was a form of knowledge passed from fathers to sons, and that therefore I was better off leaving it to them. But my husband was crap at DIY, and largely uninterested, so, after paying a series of inept handymen to put up brackets that promptly fell out of walls, I decided to roll up my sleeves and get to grips with DIY myself. The evening classes were brilliant and I’d recommend such a thing to anyone in a similar position. The classes completely demystified the subject, and made me realise that success in DIY is often down to realising that there’s almost always a specific tool and technique for every element of a project. Bodging - using the wrong tools for the job - is what makes a lot of people think they’re crap at DIY. But most DIY jobs really aren’t rocket science: there’s nothing magic or innately male about it. So for every project I’ve embarked on, I’ve spent a lot of time beforehand reading blogs, watching videos, making sure I properly understand the mechanics of what’s going to happen, before taking a drill to a wall. It’s almost always cheaper to buy one’s own tools and materials, than to employ a handyman.
My skills don’t extend to ripping out and replacing bathrooms and installing boilers, so I’m going to have to fork out for someone else to do those. But since it’s become clear that the cowboy builder isn’t going to come back to restore my floorboards and wooden stairs (and nor do I want him to), I’ve decided to do that job myself. I’ve pulled up carpets, underlay and hardboard, to discover beautiful HUGE old floorboards beneath, but with huge gaps between them. I’ve learned to sand, and to save the sawdust to mix with Bona Mix and Fill, to put between the smaller gaps of tongue and groove boards. I’ve learned about buying slivers of reclaimed pine, to fill the larger gaps. And I’ve also learned much more about my house and its history. Revealing the boards has also revealed the original floorpan of the house, the original placement of windows and chimney breasts and walls and rugs, and the adaptations that were made to it when an extension to the early-eighteenth-century core was built in the late nineteenth century. It’s made me interested in the social history of the house: who commissioned it, and when, and why, and why particular adaptations were made, and how it stayed in the possession of one particular family for 116 years, and what it meant to those who have lived in it before me. It’s also practically useful to see, with my own eyes, where the invisible infrastructure of the house lies - where pipes flow, and cables lie - and this gives me confidence to drill into walls knowing I’m in no danger of being electrocuted. I feel like I’m inhabiting my house less blindly, and in a more knowing, embedded, meaningful way.
This isn’t a happy ending. I’m absolutely devastated by losing such a large amount of money from my life insurance, which, if it wasn’t being spent on bathrooms for my kids, should have gone into a savings account for my children’s future. It should not have gone to a serial incompetent liar to spend on vet’s bills and a new car (I’m guessing). I’m angry that women are particularly vulnerable to such men, who think they can make up stories about dry rot because they think we don’t know any better. We need the law to better protect us, by ensuring greater consequences for such repeat offenders, and making ‘phoenixing’ a whole lot harder to pull off. In the meantime, I would massively recommend getting to grips with DIY oneself. It’s probably reduced my vulnerability to crappy builders more than the other protections I tried to put in place, simply because it’s reduced the number of times I have to employ one.
Well done, you did more due diligence than I ever have. I am shocked how easily men like this can continue to rip people off with no recompense to the person who paid them.
I’m so furious for you. I’m really really sorry this happened.