I have recently had the misfortune to have had some rather poor
roofing work done on my house.

I wanted someone to replace our soffits and barge board as well as re-
engineering and re-roofing our lean-to (or conservatory, as the estate
agents put it). After a lot of effort looking and talking to roofers I
found someone who seemed to actually understand what I wanted done
with the lean-to roof. His quote was the most expensive - however he
genuinely seemed like a good sort with a reputation he would want to
look after - so I hired him.

A bad sign, that sort of went over my head, after I had sent him a
letter agreeing to his quote was that he said he wanted to be around
when work started on the lean-to roof. What he actually meant, it
seems, was that he was passing the soffit and bargeboard job off to
subcontractors and intended to have as little to do with it as
possible.

Scaffolding was put up around the house. Our phone line was detached
to make way for the scaffolding and nailed down to boards on top of
the scaffolding. The roofers came and ripped off the old soffits and
barge boards. I wasn't around to see this. However, on the following
Saturday, my neighbour came round to see me to tell me that he had
found debris in his drive and he had had to pull out a load of waste
material from between my garage and his fence. It seems that the
roofers had seen the space between the garage and his fence as a good
place for this rubbish. The fact that some of it was landing in my
neighbours drive strongly indicates that the roofers were throwing it
off the scaffolding onto the roof of our garage so that it, they
hoped, would slide neatly down into the gap.

Luckily, the scaffolders were not quick to remove the scaffolding
after the replacements for the soffits and bargeboards went up. I was
able to inspect the work. I found that the capping tiles on both hips
had slipped considerably and the capping tiles above the newly
cemented-in ones were considerably disturbed. Another thing I noticed
was the distinct orange/yellow colour of the cement compared to the
light grey colour of the old cement. I wondered, momentarily, if it
was possible that too much sand had been mixed into it - but
immediately decided that anyone who had ever done any roofing before
surely wouldn't make such a basic and bad mistake. Also, I noticed
that a broken tile at the back of the roof that should have been
replaced was left untouched.

I contacted the roofer to express my concerns. He said that he would
delay the removal of the scaffolding. He told me that when this sort
of work was done that it was inevitable that nearby capping stones
would get disturbed. He told me that I would have to get the whole
roof re tiled at some point. He then dispatched an invoice to me for
£800 + VAT to reseat all of the ridge and hip tiles. On receiving this
invoice I rang him up and convinced him that it would be a better idea
for him to just get the work he had been contracted to do put right at
no further expense to myself. He came around and had a look at the
state of the work. Speaking about where one of the capping tiles had
slipped, he said he thought that the gap had been made on purpose by
the sub-contractor with a trowel. I replied telling him that I thought
that that would have been a very strange thing for the sub-contractor
to have done. Anyway, it turned out that some time later the capping
tiles were re-seated and the cracked tile was replaced. However, I
noticed that they were re-seated with same strange coloured cement.

The scaffolding stayed up for quite a long period of time. Eventually,
when we got back from holiday, we found that it had gone. What we had
gained though, was a waterfall where the down pipe was. The down pipe
should have been cleared but was now more blocked than it ever had
been. Also, there was a gaping hole in the lean-to roof - presumably
knocked into it by the scaffolders. The next morning (a Monday), I
noticed that the phone cable, rather than having been re-attached to
the house in anything like a satisfactory fashion, had simply been
hooked onto the hip iron.

I phoned up the roofer to complain about the down-pipe, the hole in
the lean-to roof and the state of the phone line. He apologised
profusely and told me that someone would come and sort them as soon as
possible. He had actually promised me some weeks earlier that he would
come round on that day to start work on the lean-to roof. The news he
gave me was that he couldn't and that he would be on holiday the
following week.

A little later that day, a neighbour who is in the building trade
called by. He was shocked both by the poor level of service and the
poor quality of work that had been done. He pointed out that:-

1) Some tiles at the back of the roof weren't settled down flat where
they met the facias.

2) There seemed to be material missing above the upstairs windows. The
barge boards were warping and sagging slightly at these points.

3) Shreds of protective film that should have been removed from the
new material were still visible making the work look untidy.

4) He also told me that it looked like that roofers had used a weak
mix of cement to fix the capping tiles in place.

My neighbour also warned me to check to make sure that the roofer
wasn't going to try and hit me with any extra charges for the
scaffolding which had been up, by then, for a considerable length of
time. I did this. The roofer told me that he was still working to the
quotation.

On Tuesday no repairs were made and it rained heavily.

On Wednesday, the phone line was sagging so precariously between our
house and the telegraph pole that I rang up BT and asked them to get
an Engineer out to fix it. I rang the roofer up and left a message for
him to say that he would be footing the bill. When we got home that
day, the phone line had been fixed by the BT engineer (who had left a
note), the down pipe had been cleared and temporary fix had been made
to the lean-to roof. These had been done by a colleague of the roofer.
I was glad these fixes had been made because I had been steeling
myself to tell the roofer never to set foot on my property again.

Unhappily, though, I am still desperately hoping that the roofer will
do a satisfactory job with our lean to. It took me quite a lot of time
and effort to find somebody who seemed to understand what I wanted
done. And the year is wearing on. What chance would I have of getting
a satisfactory outcome now, if sacked the current roofer and started
looking for another one?