The Building Renovator

1) Barry will overpromise and underdeliver in terms of cost and workmanship.
2) Barry will make out like he is looking after you and trying to save you money, but then at the same time he will try to overcharge you on the work of other tradespeople he uses. He tried to charge us an extra $2000 on another… tradesperson's bill and he probably overcharged us on a lot of other items too before we started to suspect his deceptiveness.

3) Barry will refuse to supply you with the documentation you need to get Code of Compliance, for months and months, until you threaten to make a complaint about him.

4) Barry will not show you invoices but expect you to believe the amount charged is accurate and pay them anyway. When you refuse, and dispute the amount, he will try to charge you interest. When that doesn't work, he will then threaten to get the debt collection agency on to you.

5) Barry will do things like install doors that do not close properly and leave holes in the wall because he has tried to install something in one spot on the wall by mistake, and then has had to move that thing to another spot on the wall. When you ask him to fix the defect, he will say it is a big $2000 job that will require rebuilding of the door frame and so on. When you threaten to deduct $2000 off the final payment, he will then fix the defect within 5 minutes.

6) Barry will probably take things from the property without your permission. We suspect he took our copper plumbing to the scrapyard and made money off it, without our permission. We asked him for the copper plumbing as we wanted to take it to the scrapyard ourselves, and he told us he had 'already taken it to the tip', despite there being other rubbish on the site which logically, he should have taken to the tip along with the copper plumbing.

Make sure you get a detailed breakdown of all costs and included items from Barry before you start working with him. He is great at coming across as a nice, trustworthy guy who will 'take care of everything for you' and will give a really vague idea of what he will/won't provide within his quote - but you'll end up having to purchase a lot of extras that he didn't deem to be included within his quote. He first told us that all we would need to buy for our bathroom/kitchen reno was the kitchen appliances (oven, stovetop and extractor fan) but we ended up having to buy far, far more including taps, bathroom fixtures, tiles, lights, and having to pay separate for flooring, painting, electrician, and so on."