by Melyssa Donaghy

I bought a dirty house in one of the most prestigious historic neighborhoods in Indiana without a downstairs bath.

Although I had no half bath, I did have a mud porch decorated with press-on carpet squares that had seen far better days and was begging to be torn up. During my first year of homeownership, I did not have an Angie’s List membership and became prey to an incompetent contractor.

I met a service provider who told me he would build a half bath for $1,000 labor plus materials. He laid out a design plan that made sense to me as a new homeowner without an education in mechanics. I hired him. Of course, he needed my money up front.

The next thing I know, he knocked down a non-load-bearing wall in my kitchen that separated the mud porch. Then he framed the new room at the end of my foyer between the mud porch and kitchen, using part of both rooms.

The problem was he did not have mechanical expertise or flooring skills. He did not know what Durock cement board foundation was and planned to lay tile directly onto sub flooring. His plan was to plumb my new bath with PVC and not copper. He became irate when I suggested the Durock tile membrane, claimed the extra step was unnecessary, and did not want to lay it. I made him lay the cement sub flooring anyway, which caused him to become more irate because he had to buy special blades to cut it.

I looked at his plumbing lines in the basement and was appalled. Even I could tell it was bad. He used PVC pipes and some of it was running uphill!

I was in trouble. It was about that time he stopped showing up every day, leaving his huge unorganized dirty mess behind.

The whole experience was unbearable and his work was beyond unacceptable. He completed the demolition and framed the room exactly where it should be. He also poorly hung some drywall. I was left with unfinished flooring and drywall, plus no proper plumbing or fixtures set.??

I called an emergency house meeting of my homeowner friends and bought the beer. They told me what to do, which included the immediate firing of my contractor.

They laid out the steps to finish the project perfectly, steps that included a cement board foundation under the tile and the sweating of proper copper lines. I hired and got perfectly straight, sweated copper lines through a neighbor’s referral and hired a competent carpenter who was married to a co-worker.

Luckily, today my bathroom is mechanically perfect and looks like it was always in the house. Thankfully, I never have to go through stressful contracting experiences again because today I use Angie’s list. Angie’s list works because every report we write helps promote America’s Main Street white hats, while it eliminates the unworthy scoundrels.??