The Hole in the Wall gang - defective and incomplete works

The Cowboy arrived to start work on the extension on the 9th May 2005.
I informed The Cowboy that we’d submitted the building regulation forms.
The Cowboy said he’d call the building inspector to arrange a site visit for that week once the footings were dug, and then we could go ahead with the ready mix concrete foundations for which he needed some cash. I later paid him £5000 cash
During the first week The Cowboy replaced a damaged sewer pipe he had broken which led from the objectionable neighbours property underneath the old lean-to and connected with our sewers. I and my wife agreed to pay for this damage even though The Cowboy negligently broke it and The Cowboy quoted us £100.
On the day of the building inspectors first visit The Cowboy told me that it was probably better if we stayed out the way and he’d deal with him. After the building inspector had left The Cowboy told me that the building inspector from Rochford District Council was his ‘mate Len’ and he was more than happy with the excavations.
The Cowboy did say that the building inspector was not happy with the size of the proposed French doors at the rear of the old kitchen as he thought the wall /pillar in between the kitchen and old dining room which would have to support an RSJ was not big enough. The Cowboy said he’d suggested to the building inspector that he retains some of the old dining room wall as support for the RSJ and only puts a single door in the kitchen. This meant a change to the design of the new kitchen with brick pillars on either side of the room. I agreed to The Cowboy changes as they actually meant less work. I did not ask him for a refund for the replacing the proposed double doors with a single door. At no time did The Cowboy mention ‘soft spots’ or any other problems as The Cowboy later claims. The Senior Building Inspector Mr Len Martin later confirmed to me that he had not requested any special foundation requirements and was happy with the excavations. Mr Martin also later told me that although he had seen The Cowboy vans around the area, he had never before met The Cowboy or inspected any of his work.
On Friday The Cowboy arranged for the Ready mix concrete to be delivered which set over the weekend. At this time The Cowboy had four workers on site.

On the following Monday 16th May The Cowboy began laying bricks and had blocks and materials delivered. The Cowboy asked for a second payment of £5000 which we gave to him.
From this point onwards we started to have problems.
The Cowboy started to lay the first course of bricks himself without the aid of a plumb line. Around lunchtime The Cowboy unexpectedly left site and took two of his workers Joe and Danny with him. The Cowboy left on site John an inexperienced 17 year old labourer laying bricks, and Darren, The Cowboy's labourer foreman and school friend, who knocked up cement all day long.
On Monday evening The Cowboy returned late to pick them up and didn’t inspect their work.
On Tuesday The Cowboy dropped of his workers early in the morning and we didn’t see The Cowboy again until the evening.
On the Wednesday The Cowboy appeared during the day and had a fit of rage at the work that had been done, threw tools around, shouted and swore at Darren and John, knocked down some of the brickwork and started to redo it himself. The Cowboy stayed on site for the remainder of the week.
By the end of the second week the foundation brickwork had been completed and The Cowboy had partly laid one course of block work around the base. At the end of this week one of The Cowboy's workers Danny left the job.

The third week was much the same as the second regarding The Cowboy coming and going. The first two days he left John and Darren to carry on the block work up to the level of the window base. However when The Cowboy returned on the Tuesday evening and inspected their work it emerged that they had forgotten to put the damp proof course in on the far side and laid two courses of blocks too many. The Cowboy flew into a rage similar to the one on the previous week. On the Wednesday The Cowboy approached me and apologised for his behaviour the previous evening and asked as the roof was about to go on, could he have the third payment of £5000 in cash.
After I paid him I remember joking with my wife 'computer says no' when she asked me if I’d got a receipt, as I had been given the broken computer excuse again.
For the remainder of the third week The Cowboy employed John and Darren on ceiling and plaster removal in the dining room whilst he prepared the existing back wall to put the RSJ in place and continued with the block work.
Sometime during week three DG from DG Kitchen services visited with a copy of the kitchen layout plan for approval. He noted the progress of the works and said he’d call again next week.

During week four commencing 30th May, The Cowboy fitted the RSJ and completed the block work and put in a temporary sewage down pipe from our upstairs bathroom to the main sewers.
On the Thursday DG called over with the final kitchen units plan and met The Cowboy and they discussed the layout. Before he left, DG told me he thought it would be at least another month before they would be ready for kitchen fitting.
My wife and I expressed our concerns to The Cowboy that the work wasn’t going to be completed on time. The Cowboy admitted he was a ‘bit behind’ but assured us he’d complete on time. That weekend The Cowboy offered to work through and employed a Mr DA who he knows from the school gate to help him design the roof and cut the timbers. By the end of the weekend a basic timber structure was in place.

During week five commencing 6th June, The Cowboy called the building inspector to inspect the RSJ and I believe that the roof construction was also discussed. When on site, The Cowboy spent most of the week working on the roof timbers and installed some copper pipework.
At some time during the week I returned in the afternoon to find The Cowboy and two of his workers removing tiles from my garage conversion roof and inspecting a Velux window installation. I asked The Cowboy ‘What’s going on?’ to which he replied he was just checking to see how the Velux window fitting had been done to make sure he had enough timber support for the new kitchen Veluxes which were bigger. I told him to make sure he put the roof back securely. Later The Cowboy appeared to have trouble fitting three ‘Fakro’ windows into his roof construction and spent two days fitting and refitting these windows.
In Midweek around the 8th June, DG Services called with the final plan and pro forma invoice. DG walked around the block work with The Cowboy discussing possible installation times and marking the block work where electricity points and plumbing were required.
Before he left DG told me that he didn’t think the building would be ready on time and against his advice, The Cowboy had insisted that he fit the units over a long weekend on Friday 24th June, which was the weekend before our baby was due to be born.
Sometime later that day I again approached The Cowboy again and expressed my concerns that we wouldn’t have the new kitchen ready before the baby was born. He assured me that the works to the dining room and new kitchen would be complete and we’d have use of the new kitchen. The Cowboy stated that he could then work on the old kitchen / toilet and on the outside without having to disturb us in the main part of the house. I asked him how much longer that would take and he told me possibly two or three weeks.

Over the weekend The Cowboy employed an electrician who ran the wiring out to the new kitchen and dining room and fixed wall boxes. I asked The Cowboy if this electrician would be able to supply us with the electrical certification required by the building regulations.
The Cowboy told me that he had used the electrician before and he was fully qualified and had got out of college a year before. ( It turns out later in court that the 'electrician' wasn't qualified to do the work and the installation was illegal)

During week six commencing 13th June The Cowboy and two workers John and Joe, commenced the felt and battening of the roof and with the help of a ‘plasterer’ put a plasterboard ceiling in through the new kitchen dining area. The labourers and the plasterer then put a plaster undercoat throughout the whole dining area.
On the Saturday morning The Cowboy and Darren came in for a few hours and laid a concrete screed floor in the new kitchen area.

During week seven commencing 20th June the plasterer completed the plastering.
On Friday 24th DG Services arrived and fitted the unit bases over the weekend. There were no windows or doors fitted at this stage and The Cowboy kept blaming suppliers. The Cowboy put temporary plastic over the window and door holes to protect the kitchen and the appliances from the elements. DG services couldn’t fit any appliances as no electrical points had been installed. They arranged to return the following weekend however this was later deferred as The Cowboy was unable to get another electrician for a fortnight. It became obvious to me at this point that the kitchen would not be complete by the time the baby was born and I confronted The Cowboy who was apologetic.

Throughout the next week we hardly saw The Cowboy at all. It appeared to me that from this point onwards The Cowboy had given up completely caring about timescales to complete the job. On the Thursday one of his workers John told me he’d been fixing fences at The Cowboy's house and that The Cowboy was up at the school erecting a marquee for the school fete the following day. On the Friday afternoon of the fete my wife started to go into labour. I drove to the school to tell The Cowboy I had to go to the hospital. The fete was in full swing and I met the Mrs Cowboy Builder who offered to look after our son for the duration.

Our daughter was born on the second of July 2005 by which time the works should have been completed.

The Cowboy returned to our house on Monday 4th July. The Cowboy told me there wasn’t a lot more that he could do that week as he was waiting on windows and doors to be delivered and the electrician to come at the weekend, and that he had an emergency at one of his tenanted properties. The Cowboy left one worker Joe at the site all week, who he instructed to give the whole interior of the dining room / kitchen bare plaster one coat of trade white emulsion. I didn’t see The Cowboy again that week until the Thursday when he confirmed that an electrician would be coming at the weekend.

On Saturday 9th July The Cowboy arrived with a different electrician.
The Cowboy told me that the previous electrician had worked for this one but had been given the sack when he was caught having sex with this electricians daughter. This electrician whose name I cannot remember (and funnily enough wasn't in The Cowboy's court statement and like the rest of the Cowboy's workers didn't make statements to support him!) spent the weekend putting in wiring both inside and out and fitted an external floodlight. He also ran some wiring for the cooker and added an additional fuse box (which was later condemned and removed). The Cowboy fitted all the spotlights, light switches and the plug sockets in plain white plastic (which we later replaced at our own expense). Some of them were fitted upside down and many looked used with paint and dirt on them. When I complained to The Cowboy he said that they were just temporary.

During the week commencing the 11th of July The Cowboy arrived on Monday morning with tiles for the roof. The Cowboy laid the top few rows of tiles and then handed the job to John and Joe his workers. I assumed that they were nailing the tiles. They completed most of the job that week until they ran out of tiles leaving the edges and ridges and a large gap of about two feet next to where the extension should join the house. The Cowboy completed the edges himself with some different tiles he obtained that week. On the Wednesday he pulled one of his workers off site and was entirely pre-occupied with preparing his field for the children’s party he was hosting on Saturday 16th July, in particular a giant waterslide contraption, a scaffold zip wire construction and erecting marquees. Consequently very little was done to our property.

DG Services returned on the day of the party to connect the electrical appliances and complete the unit installation. They explained to me that they had had trouble fitting some of the units as the walls were not straight and the plaster uneven. Likewise they had to make many adjustments to the height of the units as the floor screed was very uneven and pitted. DG arranged for the worktop company Abbey Marble to come in later that week, who subsequently fitted the marble worktops to a good standard.

On the week commencing 18th July, The Cowboy was on site with two workers John and Joe, on the Monday and Tuesday sawing off roof timbers, refitting some fascia and one piece of soffit. On the Wednesday and Thursday Abbey Marble installed the worktops.
On or around the Tuesday morning I asked The Cowboy what he was going to do about the remaining existing patio (440 sq ft) which by this stage had been completely ruined.
The Cowboy suggested that I extend the patio over an additional area of approx 330 sq ft up to where the old tree stump was and that I have a small retaining wall and some steps up to the lawn. This area was completely trashed and The Cowboy said he’d have to build a Soakaway in this area anyway. I asked him how much extra this was going to cost and he told me he’d have to work it out.
Some time later that day The Cowboy suggested to me that the existing patio bricks, some of which his workers had stacked would look bad compared to more modern bricks and suggested that he drive me round to see a driveway in Little Wakering which he had done with more modern bricks. He drove me to this house and I agreed the bricks looked good. Whilst there he then suggested that we drive to Builderbase to look at bricks for the patio and the wall, which we did and I pointed out some bricks I liked.
Later that day The Cowboy who told me that he’d spoken to a block paver he knew who told him the going rate was around £17 per sq metre and that with digging out the area and building the wall would cost £6000 pounds.
I asked ‘what about the making good of the existing patio?’, to which he agreed after some discussion to reduce the quote by £1000 to £5000. I accepted his quote. I asked him about a price for putting fences around the new bit of land he was using for access. He went and counted the fence panels next door and told me he’d get back to me with a price which he did later that week, of £1600 which I accepted.
(Incidentally, when I later visited the owner of the house in Little Wakering, he told me that he’d never heard of The Cowboy and that a local paver from the same road had laid his drive)
Later that week the windows arrived and were fitted. During the week The Cowboy spent one morning removing clay from the patio area with a digger and dumped it on what was left of the garden. When I complained about this The Cowboy said it would save on skips and was the best way of getting the garden level and that he’d rotovate it. He also dug a small hole for a ‘Soakaway’ and laid some pipes which we later discovered were not connected to the ‘Soakaway’ but the main foul water drains.

Neither my wife nor I are ones to complain. Whenever we had spoken with The Cowboy we had been polite. Throughout July however we both were becoming increasingly concerned at not only the quality of work but also the time it was taking to complete. We raised the issue of completion on many occasions concerning the job as a whole and individual jobs. Each time we were given no assurances as to how long The Cowboy would take to finish and regarding the state of individual jobs we got the usual ‘ don’t worry, it’s only temporary’. My wife told me when she’d asked about the lack of flashing, tiles and ridge tiles, The Cowboy had told her that he was ‘testing the felt’. When I later asked him about the same thing he replied ‘what are you worried about – it’s not raining!’

At the start of the week commencing Monday 24th July (week 12) The Cowboy started fitting the doors. I can only describe these doors as ‘short’. On the inside the frame was installed six inches above the floor level and on the outside there was a fourteen inch drop. I approached The Cowboy and told him that I thought the doors were too short and presented a tripping hazard and that we wouldn’t be able to get a pushchair in and out. He told me that they had to be that high due to building regulations and that all we needed was a step. I spoke with my wife and we both decided this was not what we had expected or wanted. I went back to The Cowboy and asked him to look at the door installation in our garage conversion. He became very aggressive and started swearing and told me that the conversion didn’t meet building regulations.
I told The Cowboy that I either wanted the doors installed correctly with no step or I wanted new doors that fit properly. I also said that we would like doors which were not broken – as was the handle and lock on the French doors and a cat flap hole cut too large on the single door. At this The Cowboy flew into a fit of temper and said words to the effect of ‘that’s f**king it – c’mon lads were off!! And he marched off site taking his bemused workers with him . For the rest of the week we didn’t know if he was coming back or not.

On the Thursday night or Friday morning The Cowboy called and said ‘What’s going on then?’ I said to him ‘You tell me ’. He then said that it was becoming difficult to him to work with my family around and that as we were going on holiday that weekend he had arranged for the electrician to come and that he would come in and finish the inside floors while we were away and also get the patio laid. I asked him what he was going to do about the doors and he told me he’d lower the lintels after he’d seen how high the patio bricks were going to come up the wall outside.

On the Saturday he arrived with the electrician and they went through the boxes of slate floor tiles saying some were of a different thickness to others and they might have difficulty getting the floor even. I went off to the tile shop to change around six boxes of the tiles to ones of the same thickness as the others. I also purchased the bedding cement and adhesive.

On the Sunday we were late leaving and The Cowboy arrived at lunchtime with the ‘second electrician’ to start laying floor tiles.

A week later we returned from holiday late in the evening of Sunday 7th August. – a day earlier than planned.
We immediately noticed that the patio bricks had been laid although kiln sand was missing from the joints. A rough coat of render had been applied to the outside walls. The Cowboy had lowered the same doors and replaced the gap above them between the lintel with pieces of timber. Inside The Cowboy had finished the kitchen floor which was covered with cement and adhesive. The tiles were very uneven and in some places raised half an inch above the adjoining tile. The place was a mess. The floor boards were still missing in the old dining room. My wife noticed that the sink was full of wire wool which we found out later they'd been using to remove the grout from the tiles and was badly damaged.
The next morning Monday 8th August The Cowboy arrived at around 10 o’clock with a gang of labourers who I hadn’t seen before. The Cowboy didn’t seem too pleased to see us and said ‘I thought you weren’t coming back until the evening’. The Cowboy explained that he’d got in some extra help to lay the patio and then made out it was such a difficult job getting the runoff correct. I asked The Cowboy about the kitchen floor and he said that he’d previously told me he wouldn’t be able get the floor even and I shouldn’t have bought those tiles. I asked him about the mess on the floor and he blamed one of his workers – Joe – who had been doing the grouting and didn’t realise it was grout adhesive combined until after he’d finished and realised the ‘grout‘ wouldn’t come off. The Cowboy seemed in such a bad mood that I didn’t dare say anything more about the doors.

This was the last week that The Cowboy was actually on site as he went off on holiday to Las Vegas the following week. He and two workers spent the rest of the Monday removing back to his house a pallet of patio bricks that he had over ordered. For the rest of the week we would occasionally see The Cowboy who was having trouble laying bricks for the steps. Joe spent two more days attempting to clean the floor with wire wool. A worker John carried on building a couple of courses of a retaining wall. Darren and Joe removed the old kitchen and ceiling and left many wires exposed. On one occasion while The Cowboy was not in attendance Joe received a very bad electric shock which burnt his hand.
On the Wednesday Joe’s brother arrived on site with Darren and the spent a day and a half putting up the fence. Darren told me that Joes brother had only ever put up one fence before.

Before The Cowboy left to go on holiday it rained and a large puddle formed on the patio around where The Cowboy had purportedly built a Soakaway. When I complained about it The Cowboy replied that it just needed thwacking down and he’d do it when he got back.
On the Friday before he left to go on holiday I asked The Cowboy if he could clear all the rubble, rubbish, tools and machinery off the garden as I had arranged to get some landscape gardeners in the following week to bring in some topsoil, rotovate the ground and lay turfs. I was concerned that if we didn’t get the garden straight there wouldn’t be enough growing season left for the grass to establish and we would be left with a mud garden for the winter.
He wasn’t too pleased and said ‘I thought I was doing that’. I explained my reasoning and he reluctantly agreed to have a skip delivered and arranged for Darren, Joe and John to turn up on the following Monday to clear up the mess.

On Monday 15th August Darren, John and Joe turned up. The removed a couple of fence panels and removed most of The Cowboy tools and equipment and left them on the land behind the property. They also cleared the best part of the rubble and rubbish into a skip which was also put on the adjacent land. While talking to them John and Joe told me they had got other jobs and wouldn’t be working for The Cowboy again. They told me they were fed up with only being paid £40 per day. I told them that The Cowboy had told me he paid them £100 per day minimum plus overtime. They were none too pleased.

With the exception of the first week, throughout the whole period when The Cowboy was employed his attendance on site was erratic.
The Cowboy would usually attend site early in the morning, assign jobs to whoever was there and then simply leave sometimes returning at lunchtime often repeating his disappearing trick for most of the afternoon. On some days I would meet him at the school gate at 3.15 and he’d say things such as I’ll be over yours in a while.
The Cowboy would rarely offer an explanation for why he could not be on site unless he intended removing all the workers from the job. On the odd occasions that he told us why he could not be on site he would say that there were emergencies.
The emergencies he mentioned varied from trouble with sub-contractors on another job, trouble with tenants and rent collection, that he had to mend his own fence, that he had problems with drainage at home, and that he had received a call from the Local Authority demanding he undertake immediate repairs to some properties he owned which were tenanted.
The Cowboy’s workers were equally erratic. On one occasion I said to one of The Cowboy's workers John ‘see you tomorrow’ to which he replied that he wouldn’t be in because he had to ‘go and sign on’.
Throughout the works everything seemed to be in a state of flux where The Cowboy would start one job but never finish it. If either I or my wife mentioned even politely any questions that we had with regards to the work he had undertaken, he was always very defensive and would say that the work was only temporary.

For the majority of the time that The Cowboy was employed at our property he showed little respect to it. Apart from the general damage he did to the garden area, The Cowboy or one of his workers ran over with a dumper truck and damaged irreparably some garden decking, a child’s trampoline and an inflatable swimming pool.
The Cowboy and his workers would constantly borrow tools from me. Some including a ladder were returned damaged and others such as drill bits and saws never returned. Internally The Cowboy or one of his workers ruined the new sink with steel wool and chipped the marble work surface. On one occasion The Cowboy threw one of our tea mugs at one of his workers in an outburst of temper. When I approached The Cowboy with complaints about damage he would sometimes apologise and say things like ‘we’ll sort something out’.

When The Cowboy returned from holiday he telephoned us and said that he couldn’t return to the site until Monday 5th September as he had things to sort out. The Cowboy later called around on the Saturday afternoon (3rd September – end of week 17) with his wife and said he wouldn’t be able to come that week as all his staff had deserted him for other jobs while he was on holiday. He said that his friend Darren wouldn’t be back from Wales for a week so there wasn’t a lot he could do on his own until he found more workers.
He also said that Darren hadn’t collected the rent from his properties as asked, so he’d have to spend the week doing that.

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