Restoration & Refurbishment

Am I obliged to give my builder a chance to rectify his poor workmanship?

Anonymous user 16/03/2024 - 2.50 PM

I hired a builder to take out and rebuild a fitted cupboard (amongs other things.) I'm on a very tight time scale and a low budget which we discussed. Having promised faithfuly to do my work over the course of the next two days, he didn't and only turned up to do it a week later after I'd made a fuss. He completed some of the work reasonably well but badly damaged newly painted woodwork and left a terrible mess of floor leveling compound splashed everywhere in the bathroom. He's only done half the work he was supposed to (boxing in pipework in the bathroom). The worst aspect is that where he's removed the old cupboard he's left great channels in the walls which he's roughly filled in with something which I suspect is the floor levellling compound and is just a mass of deep cracks and doesn't correspond with the wall level, poured levelling compound over the floor which is raised above the existing tile level in a great puddle and marked with scraped and scratches. He's put some boarding over the ceiling but not butted it up to help support the existing part of the ceiling which is cracked right across and has letft a channel between the two boards he's put up into the ceiling cavity which again he hasn't butted together. He's charging me extra for this 'making good' but I refuse to pay it. I don't trust him to come back and rectify the work and I am not on site to oversee him if he does. I'd rather not pay him for this 'making good' at all, and do it myself, I couldn't make a worse job. I have no faith in him to rectify the work to even a reasonable standard and am two hundred miles away so can't watch over him while he's working. Do I have to give him a second chance? I owe him the rest of the moneney for the original quote which I will pay (with a small deduction for losing the towel rail which is part of my vintage bathroom suite fixtures and leaving me to dispose of his trade waste). But I don't want to pay him for the 'making good' or let him back to do any more work.