Episode 8 Cowboy Trap

Over the years, I've seen some real cowboy bodge jobs,

the stuff of nightmares that would keep anybody awake at night.

I was so sure the roof was going to come in. I just stood and watched it. I froze.

Today, I'm revisiting home owners that got caught in the cowboy trap

by bungling builders who left them well and truly in the lurch.

I almost felt I was close to breakdown.

I would be out in the garden and I would just be sobbing my eyes out.

I can't wait to see how their homes and their lives have moved on since we got them back on track.

I'm so over the builder, it's unreal.

I don't think about him any more.

-You like it?

-I've come into the world of a princess, haven't I?

-Have we helped you to crack on and finish all these jobs?

-There's no stopping me now.

Along the way, I'll be giving you some top hints and tips

in the hope it will prevent you from falling into the cowboy trap.

Today's Cowboy Trap shows that no matter what scale of building work you want carried out in your home,

make sure the tradesman you hire has enough notches on his tool belt

to prove he is capable of doing a good job.

Our two stories are testimony to the fact that both big and small projects can go horribly wrong

if the builder turns out to be of the cowboy variety.

And don't underestimate the impact that can have on you!

I gave up on the garden.

I gave up on doing repairs and things like that. And my crafts?

I couldn't go into the shed.

I've got to say it's probably the worst period I've had in my entire life.

Later, we'll be heading north of the border to catch up with bonnie Lorna Russell

whose dream of a bay window ended up as a complete wash-out, leaving her devastated.

But first, a Cowboy Trap saga which started in 2007 in the large Suffolk town of Ipswich.

There, insurance broker Moira Rhodes' dream was to modernise the bungalow she lived in with her kids.

She decided to start the renovation project with swish new bay windows and found the man to do them

in a most unorthodox place.

Big mistake here. We went to a boot sale.

And this man happened to be selling,

along with a lot of other equipment off the back of this huge lorry...

And we started talking to him.

Initially, we only wanted somebody to come and install the windows.

You could say Moira's builder fell off the back of a lorry.

Anyway, when he came round to look at the windows, this geezer switched on the charm

and said he could do all Moira's other jobs too.

He said, "I tell you what I can do for you."

He said, "Have you got all these other things to do,

"installation of heating system, electrics?"

He said, "I can do all of these."

He said, "I will finish your property to such a high standard,

"you will not regret taking me on."

Our back-of-a-lorry builder quoted what Moira thought was a reasonable price of £5,000

for a host of jobs he claimed he was qualified to do.

This included installing new windows and doors, as well as tiling, plumbing and electrics.

As part of the deal, Moira would pay for materials.

Now, hiring someone for labour is OK in principle,

but if you do take that route, here's some advice.

Set up your own account with a builders' merchant.

They'll give you professional advice on the exact materials needed,

especially for bespoke items like windows.

Make sure jobs like electrical work, window installation and gas fitting

are carried out by a qualified person,

registered with the relevant bodies.

Hiring an amateur could be dangerous.

If you are hiring someone for labour only,

there should be no need to pay them any money up front.

Wait until the work's complete.

Unfortunately, Moira wasn't quite as savvy as she should have been.

She hired the apparently multi-skilled builder

and he instantly tried an age-old cowboy ploy.

When he first came, day one,

and again alarm bells should have been ringing because at this point he hadn't done any work,

he asked for £1,650.

Demanding cash on the first day - not good!

Moira went to the bank and got him it. That's really not good.

And that wasn't all. This builder's idea of a working day was pretty unacceptable.

He'd go out in the morning and we might see him mid-afternoon for an hour,

just to potter about, then he would disappear off.

We were getting uptight.

We had this work that needed doing and our builder wasn't there.

I've heard every single excuse there is for not to work. In one week, he must have had about three illnesses.

Six weeks and approximately 18 illnesses later,

this fibbing fraudster was barely scratching the surface of what he had promised to do.

And what little work he did was lamentable.

Moira decided to cut her losses and send him on his way,

but her problems didn't end there.

He left us with windows that were not level.

A hot flushing toilet.

We have doors on that were put in back to front.

We have daylight.

We can see through doors where there's no sealant, nothing's been sealed in.

Nothing out of any of the jobs that were started were completed.

Before sending him on his way, Moira had paid this cowboy £3,500

and then she had to plough a further seven grand into trying to put things right.

Not surprisingly, the stress took its toll.

Literally, the whole family was blown apart.

The bickering that went on, um...

..was just nothing that I'd ever entailed before.

I've got to say it was probably the worst period I've had in my entire life.

Moira and her family had really been put through the mill, so in 2009,

we paid her a visit to see if we could help.

-Moira?

-Yes.

-I'm Clive from Cowboy Trap.

-Hello.

-How are you?

-Hi.

I didn't know if I should slip my sylph-like figure through the gap at the bottom of the door!

And check out the front door too.

Apart from getting a draught in through there, we also have trouble with the other elements, the rain.

-The rain comes in almost a bit like a stream.

-That's not good.

The fitted windows were no better.

I've actually got a half-inch gap between where the window should be

and the actual house.

-In winter time, that must be really cold.

-It's freezing. It's freezing.

And the bathroom brought tears to Moira's eyes.

It's a bit of a cross between a bidet and a toilet

because it flushes quite warm water.

-So it's been piped up wrong?

-Yes.

The loo is almost too hot to handle.

I'm going to test its temperature. I'm just going to find out how hot that water is.

Go on.

-Look at that.

-Oh, my... I can't believe that!

It's over 110 degrees Fahrenheit.

That is unbelievable.

Well, to me, I'll tell you now, that gives a new meaning to the term "hot flushes"!

It certainly does for me.

It's not surprising Moira gave this guy the heave-ho.

It can't be fun risking your derriere on that raging inferno.

Before we got the good guys in, we wanted to do an experiment on that worrisome side door.

Sometimes the rain's lashing down. I'm just going to give this almost a gentle flow of water.

Watch what happens.

That's really just light water going in there

and it's already, I would imagine, pouring...

Yeah, lots of water going inside there. That's definitely what you don't want.

It was clear as day. There was plenty for our good guys to get stuck into.

Firstly, sorting the bathroom's preposterous plumbing, then on to sealing those wibbly-wobbly windows

and fixing those fundamentally flawed doors.

With our knights in shining armour hard at work, it was a chance

to find out more from Moira about the amateur she had hired.

He's come to your property, he's looked at the windows and doors,

and then he says, "I can do gas, I can do electric,

-"I can do your heating system..."

-Yeah.

Didn't that send an alarm bell ringing?

The thing was, he was so plausible.

I must have been like this sponge sitting there, saying,

"Give me some more rubbish cos I'm soaking it up so well."

The excuses became more elaborate.

I could write a book on the lessons I've learned.

But before embarking on her career in publishing, Moira had another task on her hands,

enjoying the fruits of our good guys' labour,

starting with the once leaky side door which had been re-hung and re-sealed.

I don't know if you notice, but the door looks a bit different now.

-Oh, yes. I can see already the draining is on the outside.

-Correct.

-But do you remember the problem we had before with water just pouring in that gap?

-Yes.

I want to do another test. Sprinkle a bit of water on the bottom of the door. Give it a good soak.

If I open the door now, because of the way that's now sealed,

not a bit is going inside.

That is such a godsend.

As was Moira's suddenly waterproof front door.

I'm really pleased.

I can see already that it's sealed which I never had before.

-That's wonderful.

-Simple, really.

-It's great.

We also sorted those shoddy windows.

-The boys have put a nice piece of unit in there now that looks really the business, doesn't it?

-Yeah.

Last but not least, in the bathroom, that volcanic toilet had cooled down

thanks to our good guys connecting the cistern to the right water supply.

There we go.

And we are down to 20 degrees Celsius,

which means that it's around about 65 Fahrenheit or thereabouts.

-Thank you.

-I tell you what, we now feel flushed with success!

Yeah, Moira's house had received a new lease of life, that's for sure.

But have we put her back on track in her quest for a dream home?

Would she complete the rest of the job she had planned?

Only time would tell.

Three years on and check out Moira's house now.

The good news is Moira's cowboy didn't put her off builders for life.

Our guys restored her faith and gave her the confidence to construct the perfect home.

Cowboy Trap came along.

They put everything that needed to be put right

and it was a platform for me to rebuild

and go forward.

And go forward she did.

Check out this sparkling new conservatory

which Moira put up herself.

Nice one, Moira.

I'm not a builder by any, any bit of the imagination,

and luckily enough, one, it's still standing,

and second, it fits in well with everything else and it's watertight.

And Moira found a non-cowboy builder to construct a den for her teenagers in the garden. Looks great.

The cabin is one of the very first things

that we've actually had outside people to come in and erect.

Now, it was the Cowboy Trap that gave us the combined tools of common sense really

to enable us to do the right thing in employing the right people.

We didn't do it before.

And we can see the result of what they've done. This time, all right.

Thanks to our good guys and Moira's good guys,

that dastardly cowboy is ancient history.

I'm so over the builder, it's unreal.

I don't think about him any more. That's history.

I'm gaining confidence in employing people to do work.

Part of that is down to me doing a lot more checking

before I take somebody on.

And Moira found out she could actually do a better job than her cowboy builder. Funny, that!

We can do some things ourselves, so it's a total turnaround.

Fantastic.

A happy ending and a valuable lesson for Moira - one you can learn from, too.

It's all too easy to slip up by hiring an incompetent builder who takes your cash and bodges it.

Moira found out the hard way. And so did the Cowboy Trap victim in our next story,

who also hired a man who was far from capable of delivering her dream.

Our next cowboy controversy took place in Bonnie Scotland,

where a builder went way beyond the pale.

I'm in Angus on the north-east coast of Scotland,

an area of outstanding natural beauty

and birthplace of JM Barrie, the author of Peter Pan,

who famously invented the Wendy house whilst living here.

That's a strange coincidence because a Wendy house is what came to mind when I first saw the work

a cowboy builder carried out at poor Lorna Russell's house.

In 2011, Cowboy Trap took the high road to visit Lorna's end-of-terrace ex-council house.

Mum of four and grandmother of nine, Lorna retired ten years ago.

She wasn't only a dab hand in the garden, but also a skilled crafter of gnomes and figurines.

It's always been a love of mine. I was very good at it at school.

But I don't sell anything. I have the greatest pleasure giving them.

Lorna had been suffering with arthritis for over 30 years.

As she got older, managing the stairs was easier said than done.

So she hit on the idea of converting a timber outbuilding into a downstairs bedroom

and in the process she'd fulfil a lifelong dream of having a bay window.

I'd been, when I was younger, in somebody's house visiting and they had a bay window.

And I thought, "That's what I would like."

In the autumn of 2008, Lorna was ready to make her bay window dream a reality,

but forgot some crucial early steps prior to getting the job started.

She didn't get all the right professional advice about the work,

so had no drawings or building warrants in place.

Take our advice. Before you start any structural work,

you should ask an architect to draw up accurate plans for the project.

Contact your local council planning department and building control

to seek advice about any permissions you may need.

Getting the right paperwork is wholly your responsibility, NOT your builder's.

But poor Lorna had no paperwork and no architect's designs.

Not a good start.

Anyway, moving swiftly on, Lorna launched into finding someone to do the job.

I phoned up a few builders and the third one came over to have a look.

I asked him, "Could I possibly have just a nice bay window? That's all I want."

And he said, "Oh, that's no problem."

He said he'd start in a couple of weeks, which he did.

The builder quoted £1,650

and wanted 800 quid up front.

Lorna gave him the green light and handed over the cash.

Not clever. It didn't take her long to realise she was on a slippery slope

into a cowboy trap.

The first thing I noticed when things were going wrong was

one day I was at the foot of the garden and I looked out and saw him

with this gaping hole and he was trying to do something to the roof.

He was scratching his head. He didn't know what to do.

And I just thought, "I have a cowboy builder here."

But Lorna made the schoolgirl error of letting him carry on and things went from bad to worse.

In the third week, there was water coming in because it had been raining.

He came back to do some repairs to stop the water, but it never really stopped.

And despite the fact that this dripping disaster was clearly his fault, he refused to return

-unless he got more money.

-I said, "You have to make it watertight."

He said, "If you ask me to come back and you don't pay me the money, I'll have to charge you more."

He came back to try and fix it and said that was the best he could do and that was it.

So far, so bad.

But just when you thought things couldn't possibly get any worse, they did, with brass knobs on.

Lorna's ceiling started to cave in before her very eyes.

I just heard like a scraping noise. And I looked and it was like in slow motion.

A long piece of paper came down with this huge piece of plasterboard

and then I saw the fibreglass stuff dripping onto the floor into a pile.

I was so sure the roof was going to come in, I just stood and watched it. I froze.

Lorna was left in the lurch with only buckets to pick up the pieces of her wash-out of a job.

I was emptying it every day in the winter when there was icicles inside.

How could somebody do this and not repair their mess?

When I say cowboy builders don't just ruin homes, but lives, too,

Lorna was a classic case.

By wrecking her home, this cowboy sent her into a spiral of depression

and caused her to lose motivation for the things she loves doing best.

I gave up in the garden, I gave up on doing repairs

and my crafts... I couldn't go into the sheds.

Poor Lorna's whole life was being turned upside down.

When we first paid her a visit in spring, 2011,

her leaky roof had loomed over her for three years and was getting worse by the day.

Hello. You must be Lorna.

How are you? Oh, you're dragging me in! I like that.

So while Lorna put the kettle on, we waded in to see the damage.

You've got to be having a laugh.

What on earth has been going on?!

Whatever has been going on has been a complete disaster. The weight is forcing that down.

These timbers are just no good now. When they dry out, they're going to warp all over the place and move.

Look at all the spores and everything growing on this lot.

-This whole thing's going to have to be stripped out.

-And what we saw next only compounded our worries.

Whoa!

I'm not liking that.

At all. We've got damp in these walls and a socket. I need to check if that's live.

Shocking.

Anyone knows water plus electricity equals potential disaster.

Time to get outside to find the root of this rotten roof.

What the heck has been going on?

There's a valley. This is raised too high for the actual flat roof itself.

I don't think I have ever seen anything quite like this before.

It was clear that Lorna had been the victim of a low-down, doggone cowboy.

It was time for a pow-wow about how she got into this pickle.

-Were you happy with the way work started?

-Sometimes he'd stand scratching his head

and worried about it and I thought, "Something's going wrong."

I could see the sagging in the roof, but when I saw it, you know, completed,

-I was pleased with it. But it wasn't so thick as this one here.

-No.

-That's what I noticed.

Lorna's so-called builder had even used interior doors for the window.

That room was never going to be warm or safe.

Lorna had wisely withheld the last payment because of the shoddy work,

but that led to an unexpected development.

His wife came to the door and threatened me. Yeah.

She was worse. She threatened to come and pull it down.

I've cried a lot. Buckets full like that.

-It was just...

-A dreadful...

-..time.

-I want to put things right for you.

-Thank you.

-Tell me what you would like us to do with that area.

All I want is a bedroom and because of building rules and stuff like that,

I cannot have a bay window.

Lorna had to forego the bay window she'd dreamed of,

but our Good Guys made the best of her garden view and put in some lovely, big double-glazed ones.

They built new walls and made the room watertight and safe.

And the icing on the cake of Lorna's brand-new bedroom was a fresh lick of paint.

Time to show lucky Lorna the stunning transformation.

This is a totally different world.

-What do you think?

-Fantastic. It really is. I love the colour.

I'm so chuffed! My friends will be jealous.

-Will they?

-Yeah!

-Our knights in shining armour had rectified the shoddy bay window

and revamped the patio area, too.

The exterior had clearly got Lorna's seal of approval.

Next, it was time to check out our Good Guys' good work inside.

Isn't that something?

Hey...

Oh, boy.

I think I'm going to faint!

Oh, thank you, Clive.

-You've got a new floor...

-Roof?

-Roof.

-Walls.

-I know. And look at my look-out as well.

-That is beautiful.

-The garden.

-Is this your dream?

-It is.

-So we're really up there on the chuff-ometer?

-The very top.

No wonder she was happy. Lorna's bedroom had been transformed

from a dripping disaster zone into a wonderful, watertight room.

But had it inspired Lorna to do more work in her quest for a dream home?

Only time would tell.

Now it's been a good year since I last saw Lorna and she had massive plans for that room.

I can't wait to see what she's done with it. Come with me.

-Hiya!

-How are you, lovely Lorna?

-I'm OK. Are you OK?

-I'm good!

Before we're even over the threshold Lorna brings out a rather fetching eye mask

to make her big reveal an even bigger surprise.

-You're having a laugh! I'm going to look a right plonker!

-No, you won't.

-Let's do it.

-Well, this is a first even for Cowboy Trap.

Right, it's time to embark on this magical mystery tour.

Yeah. What do you think?

I've come in to the world of a princess!

-Well...

-Cor, blimey!

-You like it?

-There's not too much stuff?

-No, it's amazing.

-It is just so you.

-Yeah.

Well, our Good Guys worked their magic, converting the dangerous, leaking shell

into a safe, fresh and watertight space,

but Lorna's turned it into her own Never Never Land, cosy and feminine.

Every inch reflects her unique style.

It was a real blank canvas for you to do exactly what you wanted to do.

You've got the deep shagpile.

-Look.

-Ahh!

-Isn't that something?

-I think I've put on weight.

Yep, it's good news. We've helped take a weight off Lorna's mind.

She now has the heavenly bedroom she prayed for.

But there's still the million-dollar question. Has Lorna beaten those bad builder blues?

If you were to have another builder in again, in the future,

have you learned lessons from the time of having the cowboy builder in?

I'd be very much aware, you know?

And I'd do like what you said and get into the ins and outs of it.

-And also go to the council to have plans drawn up proper.

-Yes.

And all these kinds of groundwork that you need to have to start.

-It's lessons learned. We can tick that box.

-Absolutely.

-So have we inspired you to crack on and finish those jobs?

-There's no stopping me now!

That's great news.

Lorna's got her makeover mojo back, undeterred by the nasty chapter with a cowboy builder.

We've helped her story have a happy ending.

Well, I think it's amazing what Lorna's achieved since we were here.

And what about those adorable angels? That bedroom is just her.

I have to say it's another victory for our Good Guys. Remember, if you do your research and take my tips,

the building work will be a blessing and not a curse.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd