Can i refuse to pay for shoddy workmanship?

iceskater123

I have had my decorating and plastering done by a bloke that i was in school with also his grandmother is my immeadiate neighbour which make this suitation all the more awkward...

I had him plaster half my living room at a cost of £250 mates rates which i have paid for .This job is not what i thought there was a patch a lime on my ceiling and the plaster has reacted and left a nasty patch of bubbling.The edges are all rough they dont seem to meet in the corners im going to have to fill it also all the edges around the windows are rough too. At the time of paying him i didnt notice these faults as the plaster he used was white plaster it has only shown up now the colour is on the wall, allthough i was aware it was a bit rough looking but i was having him back to do the decorating so i assumeed he would be sanding down the walls before decorating and all the imperfections wud be gone.

well a week later he returned to do the decorating.
I have had brand new floor and skirtin fitted between the week of him returning so i was really consciuos about him getting paint on the floor etc..well u guessed it glossing the skirting he got it on the floor.now he didnt undercoat the skirting he just glossed straight on there now the knots on the wood are bleeding thru..plus he has not done it right to the bottom u can see an edge of the natural wood at the bottom.then he applied the colour to the wall without any prep work:mad::mad: so when i came home the nicks and bits that shud of been sanded in the wall show up now... then on to the papering well he lost the pattern i know have a gap that doesnt join up on the chimney breast with is the main focal point of the room:mad: he just choose the left hand corner to start papering instead what he should of done is plum a line from my main feature point the chimney and work from ther each side around. plus the joins show up hes not cut the paper allong the celing properly really bugs me the joins dont butt up and they are so visible , instead of watching my tv im sat her looking above it at the crappy paper job


For the decorating he has invoiced me £100 mates rates again . he added on 8.00 the cost of the parts for capping of the rads but at the time of the quote he said the job was 100 all in and did mention that he had stuff in the van to cap off the rads no mention of charging me for parts ;-( so invoice is now £108...plus he forgot to release the air in the rads upstairs so my heating/hot water was not working for the whole week only started working when i got a plumber into sort it out as i was sick of no water to bath the kids i kept remindin him and he said yes yes i will sort it but he didnt ;-(

I am just really unhappy with the finish of the work its not the finish i expected. i did say i wasnt happy with the ceiling and he said he was going to return to finish it , he turned up today with the invoice for £108 but i wasnt going to pay till the job was finished hes coming back 2 moro to sort out the celing this is when i will tell him im not happy with the papering and finished on the edging etc.I dont like the fact the invoice has in big red writing if payment is not recieved in 5 working days i will proceed to a smalls claims court to recover the amount!!!!!

I dont really want to pay him atm the standard is not what i wished for , my next door neighbour is a surveyour and he came around looked at the work and has said this guy is having a laugh if he was on my site hed been layed off by now ......

so this is the deal .... i dont pay him make it awkard with neighbours and school where our children attend the same school and him take me to small claims court.

Where do i stand if he takes me to small claims court????? you can see that the work isnt the best would they visit me to see the evidence? as it stands now i dont want to pay. I am really unhappy this is dragging out i just want a finished living room ive cleaned up now got it tidy only for him to be scraping the ceiling!!! he should of sorted it before he decided to paint over it !

please help what would u do pay up?? i spent bloomin 100 on the feature wall paper for it to be messed up

sorry for the long post

suisidevw

Get your camera out!

iceskater123

its very hard to get things to get things to show up when u dont have a good camera i hope court wont cost me much as im a single mum

thechippy

I'd agree with trying to take some pics. The guy sounds like a muppet and does not have a clue. Put something in writing giving him x amount of time to put his work right. You'd have a good chance in court I feel and he'd have to pay up front to take you to court anyway. He probably would not bother. White plaster?? sounds like the one coat stuff which is useless at the best of times. Write to him and keep us informed...;)

Rosebery_2

Agree he sounds like a total muppet but the bill is light years away from what it probably should be disregarding the "mates rates" aspect which is a nonsense concept from a practical perspective anyway.

You get what you pay for TBH. 3 days to bodge your decorating for £ 100 - he's out of his tiny mind to even offer to do it for that and I really can't imagine what you were expecting (apart from him making a thumping loss on it).

Court? This isn't going anywhere near the county court under the small claims procedure. Don't be taken in. First he doesn't know that there is no such thing as a small claims court - small claims is a procedure processed through the county court. Second he probably doesn't know that its going to cost him £ 30 to even start the process. Third once you've called his bluff and asked him to produce proof of his public liability insurance so that you can make a claim for damage to your property and fourth you have suggested that you'll show the pictures (that you will have by now taken) to trading standards. You won't see him for dust. Just refuse to pay.

The trouble is this is going to cost you an awful lot more than you have already paid to fix it. Sorry.

Cheers

Rosebery_2

thechippy wrote: »

Put something in writing giving him x amount of time to put his work right.

Optimist. Not a hope of getting it even vaguely right with someone as incompetant as this.

You'd have a good chance in court I feel and he'd have to pay up front to take you to court anyway. He probably would not bother.

No chance this is going there. Not if he's got any sense at all :rotfl:

Cheers.

misgrace

He wont take you to court, and if he did, (which he wont) he wouldnt have a leg to stand on.
The courts tend to favour more toward the client.

When you came home after the first day he had decorated, didnt you notice the skirtings, or the walls then?

Did you actually see him paint any of the new plaster walls?, what strikes me is, if he can just apply gloss on skirtings without the usual knotting, priming etc, what has he done to the walls :eek:

And TBH, and dont want to upset you, but alam bells should have gone off when he mentioned £100. :eek:

It wouldnt suprise me if he was a Goverment artist , (draws unemployment benefit), and I'm sure you can find out, and you have him by the short and curlies.

Take no notice of the court threat, he would not win, plus it wont even get that far.

thechippy

Rosebery wrote: »

Optimist. Not a hope of getting it even vaguely right with someone as incompetant as this.

No chance this is going there. Not if he's got any sense at all :rotfl:

Cheers.

Well, not optimist, I was thinking more along the lines of him paying someone else to put it right, as he obviously can't - but I doubt he would.

No, vaque chance of court as you say - he would not pay up front to take it there and wouldn't win anyway.

Back to the same old story - you get what you pay for....;)

iceskater123

well its just got worse .... the rads he capped off he did it wrong apprently he was suppossed to have put a u bend type thing on the end to let the system fow around in a circle instead he just put stop ends in there which has allowed to air to build up and u guessed it BOOM! now i need a new heating system this has just got so much worse than a bad paint wall paper job is there any way i can take him to court now and make him pay for the new heating system ~>?

( I live in a council house it was the gas engineer that had to be called out as a emrg that has told me al the info of wats wrong council wont fix it because i made a decision to change things which is fair enuff ) just hope to god this guy turns up 2moro to have a chat a he didnt turn up today to chat about the decorating as he was putting a job right ......guess im stuffed now then

Rosebery_2

iceskater123 wrote: »

well its just got worse ....

Am having difficulty visualising this. Did he take the radiators off the wall in the room concerned? Did he then "cap off" the flow and return for those radiators in that room he "decorated"? How many other radiators in the place? Where exactly did he cap off - was it the whole system? If he capped just the rads in the room concerned off then that won't make your system go boom if its plumbed conventionally. If he capped off everything did you try and run the boiler with eveything capped off? I don't understand why it needs a complete new heating system - can you explain why please?

.......................is there any way i can take him to court now and make him pay for the new heating system ~>?

If he has destroyed your heating system then you should be in a position to claim against his PL insurance. Oh dear - bet he hasn't got any!! YGWYPF. You need to be quite certain he is liable though. Have you thought about your own insurance and let your insurance company pursue him?

( I live in a council house it was the gas engineer that had to be called out as a emrg that has told me al the info of wats wrong....

Has this "gas engineer" given you a written report? Can you precis it? Was the "gas engineer" GasSafe registered and did you see his registration?

.....council wont fix it because i made a decision to change things which is fair enuff ) just hope to god this guy turns up 2moro to have a chat a he didnt turn up today to chat about the decorating as he was putting a job right ......guess im stuffed now then

Sorry are you saying you got him to change your central heating system as well as your decorating? I am getting more confused and its becoming more and more difficult to see how to advise you. So some more detail please.

Cheers

FuzzyMoose

Sue his backside. For a £100 bodged decorating job I might have been tempted to simply not pay and call it quits but this is on a whole new level.

If nothing else, messing up a boiler that badly could have been VERY dangerous. He is obviously unfit to do the job.