Episode 25 Cowboy Trap

We're travelling the length and breadth of Britain on a mission

to rescue homeowners from the curse of the cowboy builder.

-I hate seeing you so depressed with it and upset.

-Yeah.

-I feel helpless.

It's impossible to overestimate the damage these guys do,

whether they're blatant amateurs or simply crooks.

Cowboy builders not only mess up homes, they ruin lives too.

All the happy feelings I had about getting this bigger kitchen have completely gone. It is a nightmare.

Apart from the roof, the floor, the screeds,

the plaster and the plumbing...

-Good job(!)

-Good job(!)

We've rounded up the good guys to help turn these helpless

homeowners into merry mortgagees.

And this is a fantastic bedroom.

This is a room where you'd want to spend time, it's nice and light.

It's a total transformation.

We thought our dream had been lost and we didn't actually know about how we'd get it back.

-If you guys couldn't help us, we were stuck.

-It's brilliant.

Absolutely anyone can call themselves a builder, which is

why it's crucial to know how to spot a wrong-un.

And why the next 45 minutes could help keep you

out of the Cowboy Trap.

On today's Cowboy Trap, the parents of an autistic child who wanted

an extension built to create a large bedroom for him and a bigger

kitchen for the family, but ended up with a dangerous disaster.

He looked at the beams, the support beam the builder had put in,

and said, "Actually, that's all got to come out and you've got to redo that."

And three years after we rescued her, we catch up with

a cowboy builder victim in Redditch to see how she's doing now.

Your extension was supposed to help you live on the ground floor.

-You couldn't even get in.

-I couldn't, no. It wasn't wide enough.

Our first Cowboy Trap saga revolves round a home in Birchington-on-Sea in Kent.

Birchington was first registered in 1240

and its parish church graveyard has a famous resident.

The artist Rossetti was buried here in the 19th century.

The village's population is just 9,800, but that swells

considerably in the summer when tourists flock here in their droves.

Birchington has everything you'd expect from a seaside resort.

Beach huts, windsurfing, sailing and fantastic,

albeit rather blustery walks along the seafront.

But it's also got something else, the odd cowboy builder or two.

And this one's unlucky victims live in this four-bed semi.

It's home to Ian Humpheryes, his wife Carol Torry

and their children Ellis, Nicholas and Lottie.

Ian's a biologist for an environmental agency

and Carol's a supply teacher.

Oh, and we mustn't forget, a host of pets live here too.

Cripes! It's like Noah's Ark!

Carol and Ian met each other at a party

and it was love at first sight.

-Yeah, it was a very long time ago. We met at a friend's house.

-Yes.

It was a mutual friend and we just sort of clicked.

We got on well together.

You made me laugh, made you laugh and yeah, it was really nice.

After eight years' courting, Ian and Carol married in 1990

and moved in to the house in 1993.

In May 2011, they decided to extend the property.

Ian and Carol badly needed some extra space.

Their son Nicholas is autistic

and as they began to realise their son might never leave home,

a bigger bedroom for him became a top priority.

What's more, by building an extension,

they could also have the big kitchen they'd always dreamt of.

The perfect place to bring the family together every evening at dinnertime.

This was what Carol really wanted and I was

so pleased we could get both done.

Nicholas is priority number one and then this, fantastic.

One of Carol's colleagues gave a builder

she had used a glowing recommendation, so Carol invited

him round to quote, but Carol's first impressions weren't great.

Now, call it women's intuition,

but Carol had a bad feeling about this builder.

She couldn't put her finger on it, but she found him overfriendly and well, a bit phoney.

She was also concerned that the job was out of his league,

but Ian disagreed and Carol gave in.

And despite Carol's misgivings, they didn't ask the builder for any proper references.

They relied totally on the opinion of Carol's colleague. Big mistake.

Take my advice:

If you do this and get positive feedback, you can

proceed with well-informed confidence in your builder.

Carol and Ian would live to regret not casting their net wider.

Their builder quoted £18,480.

This was to remove the existing conservatory

and extend the kitchen into the dining room.

It also included moving the existing upstairs bathroom to the front

of the house, enabling a bigger bedroom to be created for Nicholas.

Carol and Ian had contacts who could sort the windows,

electrics and scaffolding,

but the builder was to plaster inside and render the outside.

We detailed out in the letter exactly what we expected,

exactly what we wanted and we wanted it complete,

ready to decorate, and we made that quite clear.

The builder demanded £9,000 to be paid at the start of the job

in cash. Now, Carol, who I'm rapidly getting to like, told Ian, "No way.

You don't have to pay builders up front.

Any decent tradesman has accounts with local suppliers who

allow 30 days to pay for materials.

Correct. So what did Ian do? He paid him anyway.

Ian should have listened to Carol's advice.

I was too trusting and I thought, well, I've worked with builders

and things and some of them do have small cash flow problems.

-That's what he said, cash flow problems.

-So I thought, that'll get him started

and then the job will progress quickly.

Wishful thinking, Ian!

The build started in June 2012 with our cash-hungry friend

saying it would be completed in six weeks.

This was perfect for teacher Carol.

It would all be done and dusted by her summer holidays.

I'm thinking, that's great.

Six weeks, it'll all be done

and then I can just get in with a paintbrush and start decorating.

Sounds like a plan. But things didn't get off to a good start.

From day one, the builders kept coming up with reasons for Ian to hand over

more money, like the foundations needed to be deeper than expected.

And he kept leaving a terrible mess. The garden was strewn with rubble.

Oh, and another thing, have you heard that song Firestarter?

I think it was named after this guy.

I came home from work one day to find that they'd had a big

bonfire in the middle of the lawn, which was a bit...not...right.

And where the sparks had shot off,

it had burnt through the children's trampoline.

So Ian had a word with him about it

and he said he wouldn't do it again and then two days later, he moved

the trampoline across the garden on top of a flowerbed

and had another bonfire. So, we thought, "That's not right."

The little work that was being done was, how can I put it, rubbish!

The mortar between the bricks was soft and crumbly.

That's good for chocolate, but not so good when it's supposed to hold your house up.

The drains were unfinished and smelly

and concrete was spilled on Carol and Ian's once immaculate garden.

They began to realise their builder was way out of his depth.

I think he didn't have a clue on this size structure.

I think he's OK on doing small jobs.

In terms of a proper builder, he didn't have a clue.

The builder's working day could be measured in microseconds.

He'd be away by 3pm and when he was around,

he spent most of his time on the phone.

I thought that was a bit odd. Trying to get a job done quite quickly.

But he seemed to be getting slower and less done and we're thinking,

-"Hm."

-Yeah.

Hm, indeed! The builder was asking for cash left, right and centre.

Carol and Ian started to wonder

if it was being spent on a project closer to home.

Or more precisely, spent on HIS home.

As he was doing our job, "My wife's kitchen's all being

"done at the moment," and we're thinking, "Oh, OK."

When he first started, when he got the materials and he had the first couple of lots of

money off us, he kept saying to me, "She's having a wonderful kitchen. "I'm buying all these new tiles."

I think we rapidly realised afterwards that all the money we'd given him

wasn't going on our job, it was going on his wife's kitchen!

And this cheeky fellow wasn't finishing...well, anything.

The floor in the kitchen wasn't complete,

the roof was a shambles and the guttering non-existent.

The whole project was rapidly descending into chaos.

He kept making excuses saying,

"We can't do the floor because we have to do the plastering first.

"We can't do this because that has to be done first." We said, "OK."

The situation was becoming farcical.

Carol actually spotted the builder foraging in the garden

for wood to use for the joists.

He was reusing old nails and old bits of plywood.

You couldn't make it up, could you?

We were saying, "Hang on.

"What's going on?" He said, "It's all right."

He brushed everything away, if you spoke to him about things.

This fella must be the cheekiest cowboy of all time.

His next ruse was to tell Carol that he wouldn't be doing the roof

or the plastering.

He said to me, "I didn't quote for this. This isn't in the quote that I gave you.

"I shouldn't be doing this." I said, "Actually, it is.

"I've got the quote." "Oh, I forgot I'd given you a copy."

So I said, "Yes." So at that point, I really began to panic.

And I'm not surprised.

Ian then showed the builder all his bad work, which took a while.

And the builder said if they were so unhappy, he would leave.

And he did!

By this point, Carol and Ian had handed over £16,500

and their home had been completely wrecked.

It is a nightmare. I really wish we'd never started it.

And the nightmare was about to get worse.

Carol and Ian called in Building Control, who pointed out a series of problems.

The biggest thing was that he looked at the support beam

the builder had put in and he said,

-"Actually..."

-It was a piece of timber from the garden.

"..he's used a piece of rotten timber that's the wrong size for the support beam.

"That's all got to come out and you've got to redo that."

Using rotten timber to support the floor above?! Incredible!

The whole building could collapse like a pack of cards.

Not surprisingly, this whole episode has had a massive impact on the couple.

Ian feels guilty he chose the builder.

Carol's been left in the depths of despair.

-I hate seeing you so depressed with it and upset.

-Yeah.

But to be honest, I think we have a very strong marriage.

We've been married for, like, 23 years.

And if we didn't have it, I think

possibly we would have split a long time ago.

What a ghastly mess.

Not just the bricks and mortar, of course,

but the effect it has had on the family.

Now, Ian, I know, has been doing a lot of work himself to try to put things right,

but I've got a feeling this one's going to be

far beyond the scope of a beginner, no matter how committed they are.

But how unsafe is the disaster zone this cowboy left behind?

What is the true extent of this building calamity?

To find out, we asked independent building surveyor

Ian Alexander to inspect the work.

He's been through it with a fine tooth comb

and he's about to fill me in on what he found.

They're living with this debacle, aren't they? This kitchen, here.

First item on the agenda, the jaw-droppingly dreadful floor.

It is appalling.

What they have done is put

a screed down and they have

completely got it wrong.

Looking at this photo, the levels are all wrong,

and if you get the flooring wrong, everything you put on top of it is going to be wrong too.

I wonder what Ian thinks as to how the doors have been fitted.

They're not draught proof.

There's basically a gap all around the doors.

When we look at the outside we see that the basic

details of weather-proofing have been missed.

These doors already look ten years old. That's not surprising.

No gutters have been fitted,

so water is continually running on to them.

The entire kitchen looks like something out of Steptoe And Son.

It would look even worse if the floor above comes crashing down

and Ian's investigations have revealed that as well

as rotten timber supports, the cowboy put suspicious steels in too.

-Is this any good?

-In a word, no.

They haven't put adequate fixings. All the connections at either

end of the steel are poor.

And on the external wall side, you can actually see daylight.

It looks like the upstairs might end up downstairs before you know it.

Talking of upstairs, Ian was horrified with what

he saw in what was supposed to be Nicholas's room.

If you actually look at the joists, you'll see that the joists are not

structurally supported in places, but also that there's a ledge.

These joists here are proud of the existing floor.

To put floorboards on top of it, you've got a step.

And that is truly bizarre.

A split-level floor? I guess it's not surprising this cowboy did a runner.

The builder has absconded here.

Now, leaving a house in this state, it's an absolute disgrace.

It is. You could step through one of those floorboards

and you'd be straight through into the ceiling below.

The higher up you go, the worse things get - because the cowboy

left the couple with no roof, Ian had to try to fix it himself.

And there's insufficient overhang.

Moisture will just run down the wall.

So apart from the floor, the screed, the plaster and the plumbing...

-Good job(!)

-Good job(!)

I mean, seeing such a debacle,

how would you mark this building work out of ten, Ian?

It's got to be two, three.

-Yeah.

-Cos they turned up.

-Cos they turned up, yeah.

From what Ian's showed me, one could argue he's being a bit kind.

When it comes to this catalogue of disaster, blimey,

where do you start?

A rotten beam, a chaotic kitchen floor, a sloppy slab,

French doors full of gaps, a bungled bedroom, no guttering,

a rubbish roof and not to forget a render that's wetter than

a wet weekend in Wetwang! And to cap it all,

the cowboy walked off the job in a totally unfinished state.

In short, if this was a lesson in buffoonery, it would be

a master-class. Time to bring in the good guys.

Yup, here's our man who can hopefully put a smile

back on Ian and Carol's faces - good guy head honcho Brendan Healy.

So much needs doing to make this place safe

and secure for the little ones, Carol and Ian are chipping in.

Under the watchful eye of the family cat,

Healy's heroes swing into action.

It's out with the saws, drills and spades.

They can't fix every bodge. Health and safety comes first.

The main priority is sorting the suspect supports.

And making the upstairs bedroom fit for purpose.

Compared to what they were faced with, it's a great start.

But can Brendan's boys get Ian and Carol's dreams back on track?

Only time will tell.

I'm on the Kent coast in Birchington-on-Sea where

Ian Humpheryes and Carol Torry wanted to extend their house to

give their son Nicholas, who has autism, a decent bedroom.

But the builder recommended by a friend at work turned out to

be a cowboy, who turned their home into a disaster zone.

Well, our good guys have now finished their work,

so let's see how Ian and Carol are getting on.

This was a really challenging rescue mission.

Let's hope our fellas have saved the day.

-Hello. Carol?

-Yes.

-Hi, I'm Jonnie. Ian?

-Nice to meet you.

-You too.

-And this is?

-Enzo.

-Hello, Enzo.

-Come on through.

-Thank you very much.

As soon as I cross the threshold, I can't resist a quick peek.

Remember before, the kitchen was catastrophic.

Now, check it out. It looks amazing.

Upstairs, the bedroom supposedly destined for young Nicholas

was in a state of chaos.

Can't say that now. What a stunning transformation.

Right, before I take a closer look at the good guys' work,

I'd like to ask Carol and Ian about when they first realised they were in serious trouble.

So how did things come to a head then?

There was a question of he moved the bathroom from the back

of the house to the front of the house, so we could build and there

was, surprisingly,

some pipes in the room where he had moved the bathroom from.

And he said, "I didn't expect there to be pipes there.

-That's going to cost more money cos I'm going to have to get the plumber in.

-What?

-He wasn't expecting to find pipes in the bathroom?

-That's right.

-Yes.

-That's what he said to us.

-"I didn't expect there to be pipes there,

"so I'm going to have to get a plumber back to move those

"pipes, so they're out of the way, so we can open up the bedroom."

Well, that's one of the daftest things I've ever heard.

And despite Ian agreeing to pay extra for the plumber,

the builder still walked off the job.

How much money had you paid at this stage?

At this stage, we were £15,500.

And how long had they been on and off site?

Well, it started at the end of June

and by this time it was end of July, 27th.

They'd been on the site about a month.

Fifteen and a half grand?! Not bad for a month's work, eh?

Well, that's if you can call it work.

It wasn't just under par and bad workmanship, it was life-threatening.

-Yeah.

-He could have killed the whole family.

I don't care who they are, and how much they want the money or how they rip people off,

there is no excuse for putting a family's life in danger.

No, there is not. But thankfully, our good guys came to the rescue.

And it's time for me to check out their handiwork.

Starting outside,

it's great to see they completed stage one of rectifying that

risible render, creating a gap to stop water coming into the house.

Of course, we're not out of the woods yet. There's still more work to be done.

Now, this rendering, it's just terribly put on in the first place.

But also, it's not even thick enough. Look at that, here.

But here is the main problem.

Now, this here, you see. This is the damp proof membrane.

Now this is the ground floor,

if you like, this is where you walk along inside the home.

Now, damp, that will travel up if it can find any sort of root.

Now this membrane will stop it travelling above this

course of blocks.

But unfortunately, this render has been laid, or had been laid,

over the top of this membrane, so the damp could continue to rise

and bridge over the membrane and then into the house,

rotting floorboards, rotting anything it comes into contact with.

So, thankfully, someone has managed to chip away at this render

so this is not being bridged.

There's a gap here now to stop water coming up through,

but also now there needs to be some sort of beading come out here,

so the rendering can come out onto the beading

and then drop below and then continually having a gap here

so the water can't come up and back into the house.

It's a huge relief to see the damp proof course now exposed,

ready to be sorted out.

Right, let's check out the first floor bedroom.

Couldn't have done that before. Now, I wonder how our good guys did this.

If you remember, it was just joists here, but the big problem

here was this new floor was sitting proud of the existing floors there.

There was about that much gap.

Plus if you put the floor on top of it, you'd be looking at that.

But...one level there.

This floor is as flat as a pancake.

The change from this to this is absolutely remarkable.

It's a really good size room now, isn't it?

We've got electrics here, it's lovely and warm,

central heating, a brand-new radiator at the end.

It's plastered, it's painted. It's finished.

But let's not forget here, the whole reason why Carol

and Ian went through the ordeal of having this extension was to

get extra space for their son Nicholas.

And this is a fantastic bedroom.

This is a room where you want to spend time, it's nice and light.

It's a total transformation. I'm absolutely chuffed.

And last but hopefully not least, I'm going to check out the kitchen.

This is fairly different. Goodness me! First things first, really.

It was unsafe. Now, that's been fully remedied here.

They've managed to sort out that almost floating pillar.

Steels all boxed in.

Phewf! That's a relief proper steels, properly fitted.

I'd rather not have Nicholas's smart new bedroom landing on my head, thank you very much.

And when I look down, there's more good news.

The flooring's been levelled off and check out these snazzy tiles.

Plus there's underfloor heating too. Brilliant.

What most pleases me about this place is that

so much has gone on in this room to get to just this.

OK, there's a few bits and bobs that need finishing off,

but this is an amazing room now.

Let's not forget, this is the new part of the house that wasn't

weather-proofed, wasn't watertight and most importantly for the

family, it was unsafe and now, well, it's pretty much done, isn't it?

I reckon our good guys have played a blinder.

Head honcho Brendan's come to talk me through the challenges he faced.

-The cowboy builders put in a steel.

-They did.

-In the kitchen.

-Yeah.

-Now, what was that like?

-We felt that there was issues

that there was a gap between the pier

they built on the left side

and the existing party wall.

We referred it to the building officer who is local and he agreed

that we should remove the pier and mechanically fix a wall starter pack.

Well, that must be a massive weight off Carol and Ian's minds.

As must the fact,

they now have a functioning bedroom for young Nicholas.

Upstairs on the first floor, there was

flooring missing from what is now clearly a bedroom.

How did you go about that? Cos there was all sorts of different levels, the joists were proud.

There was no guarantee that we could get it to the right level,

but what I did first was I put down a temporary floor, which gave me

a safe working area.

And last but not least, proof that Brendan's got a heart of gold.

-We painted the walls for free.

-Good on you, mate!

We thought, we'll do a miss-coat, make it look ready.

At least it'll spur them on.

That gave them one room that they could use.

This needs to be a bedroom for a very important member of their family.

-They wanted a bigger bedroom and now they've got one. So fair play to you.

-Lovely.

Before I do the grand tour with Carol and Ian,

I'm going to chat to them about their cowboy builder.

I wanted to find out his version of events. It seems only fair.

But unfortunately that's proved easier said than done.

Now, we always give the cowboy builder a right to reply,

to allow them to give at least their side of the story.

But in our attempts to get hold of him, he refused to talk to us.

-He put down the phone on us.

-I'm not surprised. That doesn't surprise me at all.

As I say, it is the whole way he engaged with us.

Didn't want to answer questions.

You asked him questions about various things and he refused.

He was rude to you at times, wasn't he?

Further to our attempts to contact him, we sent him a detailed report

of what the surveyor highlighted and he has just ignored that.

I'm not surprised. I think he would.

He's pretending it didn't happen and it would carry on.

It wouldn't affect him. He didn't care.

You could tell that, the way he just packed up and went.

He had no concern what he left us in and no concern for our family.

-He just wanted the money and gone.

-He may well be watching this now.

What's your message to him now, if he is watching?

Well, I don't know how, personally, how anybody can live with themselves

when they can do such bad work that it can actually cause death.

And if our house had fallen down, it could have killed us.

So true.

This was a particularly traumatic cowboy trap for Carol and Ian to endure.

But the good news is our fellows have totally transformed this place

and it's time to find out the impact their work has had on Carol and Ian's lives.

-Now, we finally have the big kitchen.

-BOTH: Yes.

-Goodness me. This does look different.

-It does, yes.

-It feels much better, doesn't it?

-What has happened to your little bit of handiwork?

You had built some form of sink.

The rustic sink has been relegated to the garden.

-Firewood soon, that will be.

-Not a bad shout.

It looks, I mean, I love these worktops.

It's a great job.

The transformation from this...

..to this is remarkable.

-You've come on great guns, haven't you?

-Yeah. We can see daylight now.

-That's the main thing.

-You can't see daylight where you shouldn't see daylight!

Straight up at the ceiling and everywhere else, that's right. Yes.

You can see daylight through the proper places, which is great.

Right. Onwards and upwards into Nicholas's bedroom.

-You must love coming into this room.

-Yes. Yeah.

It's fantastic and it's for our son, when we see his face

and you know this is his future, isn't it?

He is going to be living with us for the rest of our lives

and this is a space that he can grow into

and just have his own sort of comfort, isn't it, really?

Extra space for Nicholas was the catalyst that started Carol and Ian

off on this emotional rollercoaster.

It's wonderful that it now has a happy ending.

Nicholas hates change and he actually took to this room, didn't he?

-We were amazed.

-Really?

-He doesn't like anybody else coming in here.

-No.

This is his space. He's owned it. We wouldn't even have to change the colour of the walls.

He had to keep the walls the way they were because he loved it as soon as he walked in the room.

I love it, too. What it looked like before to what it looks like now.

Who could fail to love it?

I've rarely seen an example of something that's had

such a beneficial effect on people that this is.

When we came in here you both brightened up as soon as you opened the door.

The pressure's come right off us.

Our dream was to give Nicholas a room he could grow into

and we thought our dream had been lost and we didn't know how to go about getting it back.

-Without you guys coming to help us we'd have been stuck.

-It's brilliant.

Well, that's music to my ears.

Time to leave them and their lovely children to enjoy their new home.

Initially it's pretty frustrating to hear how the careless acts

of a cowboy builder can have such a profound affect on a family,

especially their son Nicholas who, let's face it,

was the main reason they embarked on this project in the first place.

But having looked around,

we can see the family, at least, have turned a corner.

Looking at Nicholas's room, it looks fantastic

and apparently he thinks exactly the same.

So hopefully, moving forward, there are a few bits and bobs

to finish in the kitchen which Ian is more than happy to carry out

and then, well, they've got the family kitchen they all wanted

but also, moving into the summer, they can get out and start tackling that garden,

which I know is exactly where they want to be.

For our next Cowboy Trap saga,

we revisit a homeowner we first met three years ago.

Like with Carol and Ian, this story revolves around a cowboy builder

who didn't care about stitching up a customer by leaving an unfinished disaster of a job behind.

His unwitting victim was Carol Alley who lives in Worcestershire with her daughter, Kirsty.

When we met her, Carol was about to have an operation

on her feet, which had long been a problem for her.

I was born with club feet and started to develop a lot of pain

when I got to about 40 and found out I'd got degenerative arthritis.

Carol saw a specialist who gave her the news she'd been dreading.

Carol was told she would have to have two major operations

on her feet, which would leave her wheelchair-bound for over a year.

This, of course, had huge implications,

not least how she would manage in her home.

Carol decided the only course of action

was to convert her garage into a bedroom and bathroom.

I've got a garage that I didn't use

and I thought it was the best idea to have my bedroom and an en suite there.

I talked to the council and they said I could have a grant

but it wasn't until April 2010

and that was halfway through my operations

and I needed it before then.

So I remortgaged and picked a builder to come and start work.

The builder Carol chose quoted £17,000 to do the work.

That was to convert her garage into a bedroom and en suite bathroom.

The conversion was to be wheelchair-friendly

with wide doors and ramps.

The build started in late January 2010.

Week one was digging footings for the extension.

And I was happy with that so I paid at the end of the week

and it seemed fine up until, I would say, week three,

when I started noticing things that he'd said he was going to do and he hadn't done.

Yep, the builder was poor at keeping his promises.

Like keeping the project on schedule, for a start,

and fitting doors and windows that shut properly.

Plus those weren't the only problems.

The builder made a catalogue of errors,

including a wrong-shaped door in the wrong place,

which wasn't even wide enough for a wheelchair.

What's more, the floors finished at different levels,

creating even greater problems for wheelchair access.

You couldn't make it up.

Unless you're the author of particularly grim fairytales,

which I guess you're not.

It's unbelievable that the room was pretty much

as wheelchair unfriendly as you could imagine.

You have to step up into it rather than flush level

with the floor with the rest of the house.

He'd said to me it was going to be one level and I'd be able to move

around it in a wheelchair without any trouble, if I needed to.

There is actually an approved standard measurement

for internal door widths for a wheelchair

and it's a minimum of 840 millimetres.

Any builder worth their salt would have known this or at least looked it up.

And as for the laughable so-called bathroom door,

it concealed a truly grisly bodge.

The plumbing to the toilet was a disaster.

For some reason it had a backfall so the water from the loo had to come up before it went out.

Inevitably, the waste from the toilet would stay in the pipe

after flushing or even end up in the shower.

Disgusting.

And the cowboy's work was unsafe, too.

The light fitting didn't have an IP rating weather protection.

Obviously, there's steam in a bathroom

and water and electricity don't mix.

Take my advice:

..or is government approved.

If in doubt, ask your local council for advice.

And looking at the slapdash efforts of the guy Carol hired,

he should have been in stirrups and a Stetson.

Carol was becoming increasingly worried

so she called in a building inspector.

He agreed with Carol and put his concerns to the builder.

But our man was a bully who didn't take criticism well.

When I asked him about any issues,

he swore at me and said that if I didn't shut up

that he was going to walk off anyway...

..which worried me because I needed it finished for my next operation,

which was due in October.

In the end, I did say to him I wasn't going to be held to ransom

and I wasn't going to give him any more money until I could see

things were moving on a bit better.

He just turned his back on me and walked off.

And he didn't come back.

So after spending nearly £8,500,

Carol was left with a split-level floor, a dreadful door,

pitiful plumbing, shocking electrics...

Oh, I almost forgot to mention that the tiling was only half done.

Carol was so distraught she cancelled her operation.

But guess who came to the rescue?

Our Cowboy Trap crack team of good guy builders set about

rectifying the rubbish job.

First up they removed the door frames so wider doors could be fitted

and then it was onto the plumbing, electrics and tiling.

Never easy fixing a badly bungled build but guess what?

The good guys did a fantastic job.

Carol got the en suite bathroom with wheelchair access

she'd wanted all along

and her bedroom was totally transformed, too.

From this building bodge to a bit of building brilliance in one good guy fell swoop.

Thanks to our helping hands, Carol was back on track

but would her new wheelchair-friendly home give Carol

the quality of life she so desperately needed?

Only time would tell.

It's been almost three years

since we helped Carol out of the Cowboy Trap and even with the snow,

I can see there's been a few changes around here.

I know Carol's still having problems with her arthritis

so let's see whether that hard-earned extension

did indeed give her the ideal home.

I want to see whether our good guys have changed Carol's life for the better.

She has another operation coming up which will stop her walking for months.

A wheelchair-friendly home is essential.

-Hey, Carol.

-Hiya.

-How are you doing?

-I'm fine, thank you.

-Now, then. Someone's been busy.

-I've had a builder in to do my drive.

Haven't you just?

I haven't got over the threshold yet and I can already see the builders

Carol got into landscape her garden have done a great job.

When we met, Carol said she felt so low she vowed never to use tradesmen again.

Clearly our good guys have revived her faith in the building fraternity.

-Time to head indoors.

-Come on through.

The changes we made three years ago have clearly given Carol

the quality of life she so desperately needed.

It just seems ridiculous, doesn't it?

Your extension was to help you live on the ground floor but you couldn't get into it in a wheelchair.

No, it wasn't wide enough.

The ramp our good guys installed will come into its own

when Carol has her latest operation, as will the widened door.

The cowboy got that badly wrong.

It went narrow at the bottom so it didn't shut.

-So we had to have it widened.

-Hilarious.

-To make it fit.

Here, as well.

The window, beforehand, there was no real windowsill, was there?

-It didn't fit properly?

-It didn't fit properly.

-But now it looks like it should do.

-And draught-proof.

-And draught-proof.

-This is where you sleep, for goodness sake.

-I do.

And thanks to our fellows securing the windows,

Carol has been able to sleep soundly for the last three years.

You're not always going to be using a wheelchair but you need to be able to use it.

Every time I go in and have an operation,

I need to be able to just get in and be able to get into this room.

And beforehand, you were worried about not getting this done in time.

I had to cancel an operation to get the work done.

Well, that's ridiculous.

It just goes to show the damaging affects cowboy builders can have on your life.

Right, into the bathroom.

Once the scene of a humungous cowboy bodge.

Three years on, it now completes the picture of ground floor living

Carol desperately needs.

-Beforehand you could see underneath the shower tray...

-You could.

And when you flushed the toilet, the waste used to come into the shower.

It did.

The cowboy couldn't even get the tiling right.

The bad guys left it like this.

Our good guys weaved their magic and in the years since,

Carol has given her own personal touches to an en suite that's proved a resounding success.

It has just made life so much easier,

just being able to come in and get on with things.

That's why you went through this in the first place, isn't it?

A lot of people like to have the luxury of an en suite

but for you it's a necessity.

Your mobility is restricted

so that you want everything as close as possible on one level?

-And now I've got it.

-Now you have it and you are smiling at last.

And Carol has good reason to smile.

The gravel forecourt outside is a really professional job.

I imagine it's probably better for you with your walking, isn't it?

Yeah, it's fine. I don't have any trouble.

I thought that having stones it might be a bit tricky

but it hasn't been at all. It's been great.

In this weather it's probably better than having flagstones.

It would be slippy, yeah.

Now, beforehand, when the builder left,

this wasn't in the original builder's remit,

but he left it in a right old state after working on it.

He mixed his concrete and broken the slabs that the car was sitting on.

-He mixed his concrete directly onto the slabs?

-He did, yes.

And they were broken, he'd broken them.

From my days on-site, I can't recall a builder doing that.

Any decent builder mixing concrete puts timbers down

to protect the surface underneath.

Carol has certainly rung the changes around here.

If you look at what the cowboy left behind

and compare it to when our good guys got things back on track

and then three years on, after Carol has weaved her magic,

what a transformation!

OK. Time for a sit-down chat.

I want to find out how Carol's faring three years on

from the emotional turmoil of being caught in the cowboy trap.

What was going through your mind

when you had this looming date for this vital operation

and you had nowhere to really go and live afterwards?

I was scared, really.

I thought, "I can't really go for this operation,

"knowing I've got nowhere to sleep."

-So you cancelled the op?

-I did.

I had to wait another six months to be taken back onto the list

to get the operation done.

And the good guys timed their rescue perfectly,

completing the job just before Carol's rearranged operation.

-They finished work the day before I went into hospital.

-Wow!

Just in time.

It was nil by mouth at 12 o'clock and into hospital

and then four days later, I had a room to come back to.

It must have been reassuring to know she was coming back

to a room that look like this rather than a bodge that looked like that.

What would you do different now, if you were to hire a builder?

I did it in the right order, I thought.

I looked at three quotes. I'd still get three quotes.

Do you think you kicked the cowboy out at the right time?

-No. I should have done it sooner.

-Yeah.

-I think, for me...

-I felt intimidated, though.

It's part of the cowboy trap.

It's very easy for people on the outside to say,

"You shouldn't have paid all this money or you should have kicked them out earlier."

This is all part of the cowboy trap that gets you as owners sucked in.

I think in the future, and you'd know this now,

-it's put your foot down.

-Straightaway.

That's not right. Yes.

So where do you think you'd be if the cowboy builders had left

and you hadn't got in touch with Cowboy Trap?

Don't like to think cos it upsets me.

I just wouldn't have been able to move on.

I hadn't got the money, I hadn't got the resources to...

And if I hadn't have made that e-mail to you,

I would have been in such a state.

It's amazing that after, how many years is it now? Three years?

-Three years.

-Three years, the emotions can still be so raw.

It's amazing what these people did to you.

-But it's moved on tremendously.

-It's moved on, it has.

It's just so much easier.

It's taken the weight off my shoulders,

thinking that I can just come in

after an operation and stay down on the ground floor.

-It's given you a future here, in this house.

-Thank you.

And with that it's time to bid Carol and her lovely home farewell.

It's great to see first-hand how things have improved for Carol

since we first met her three years ago.

As she said herself, the extension now feels fully

part of her home and with another operation on the way,

it's a relief to hear that she can go into this vital surgery with peace of mind.

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