David wrote:

"J. Allan" wrote in message . au...

"David Green" wrote in message
.com

Please can anyone help restore my sanity?

We are over six months into building an extension to our home. The
small local builder we engaged to do the job said it would be finished
in 5 months, and signed a contract to that effect.


lots of really good advice from others snipped

God, your experience sounds identical to mine 2 or 3 years ago, which
SWMBO and I rank as one of the most stressfull periods of our lives.
We're still suffering now; eg long after the builder left I still have
a new loo and sink lying on the floorboards of our new second
bathroom, waiting for me to do my stuff and causing plenty of marital
dischord!

I would strongly advise the 'pleading, cajoling' route rather than
getting heavy-handed; use the legal route as an absolute last resort.
I think you're unlikely to get a good result that way. You say the
guy is a small builder (like mine was) and that he's slow to pay his
subbies (like mine was). Turned out my bloke was about 50p away from
bankruptcy; he'd been stiffed on an earlier job and had been diverting
funds from my project to pay off the previous one, and once I said
'enough is enough', ie stopped the staged payments because not enough
work was being done, he wasn't interested any more.


A lot of builders will front load the job, so the basic structure goes
up fast, you pay money, thinking ;'its nearly there'

Then comes the time conbsuming and expensive part : Getting teh trdaes
in to do the real work - electrical plumbing plastering etc. At this
point teh builder isn't working much on the job, and couldn't give a
stuff. He is happy to walk away half wayt throuigh, with his profit,
leaving you with the messy job of project management and subcontractor
handling.


The key is to pay fair whack for every stage - not over, not under.

Otheriwse teh builder has an incentive to be sacked - he has got more
than a fair whack, and whats left is more hours, les money.

Be warned.



Which may be
where you are. Problem is if you try to sue him, you'll may well find
he has no cash or assets worth anything, and you may win, but all you
do is force him into bankruptcy and have to cover not only the rest of
the building work but also legal costs too.

I don't know how much you've paid in installments; maybe like me you
reckon you've paid roughly according to how much work has been done;
however we found that the reality was that at crunch time, there was
so much 'bitty' work left over, involving loads of subbies for small
amounts of time, that it would have been a lousy job for any other
builder to take on, and the costs would have been disproportionate to
the amount of work left over.

Although what I really felt like doing was kicking the guy's backside,
we ended up paying our builder a bit more cash, ie over and above the
agreed price, and on a strictly daily basis, just to do the bits I
really couldn't do, and then I did (am doing!) the rest myself. It
really grated to pay more, but the reality was that this was the
cheapest option open to us to get the job (sort-of) done.

Very best of luck...
David