A homeowner claims he's thousands of pounds out of pocket due to a botched garage conversion.
Anthony Rohomon was hoping the outdoor single-storey building could be turned into a two-storey unit, with a further single storey area for storage.
The 48-year-old employed G.T Joinery & Building Services Ltd to do the job, Derbyshire Live reported.
Mr Rohomon wanted the space for a crafts area for his wife, and a TV and entertainment area, which he told the company.
The owner of the company, Thomas Bradley, told him he wouldn't need planning permission because it was “just a garage conversion”, he claimed.
Once the building work started, council building control officials refuted this idea and paid a visit to the property to assess the work.
Mr Rohomon said: “We got this builder off Check-a-Trade and Trusted Trader, so he’s on all those sites.
“We agreed the price and everything, and we asked him if we needed any planning permission or building control, but he said no because it was just a garage conversion, and he’d done loads of them.
“We paid him up to £13,000 but we changed a few doors, so it came to roughly £18,000 and we paid him £13,000 because he was literally probably a week away from finishing.
“I rang the local council just to check that I didn't need planning permission or building control.
“They said I did and sent an inspector round the next day.”
The building inspector from South Derbyshire District Council visited Mr Rohomon’s property and sent his report, which identified 14 problems with the building work.
Mr Rohomon confronted the builders with the problems identified by the inspector, such as a lack of solid foundations and loose hanging bricks.
G.T Joinery & Building Services Ltd denied the allegations made by the building inspector, but asked for a further £6,000 to rectify the issues, Mr Rohomon claimed.
He continued: “The building inspector near enough tore it apart, everything he’d done.
“Currently it’s all got to be ripped back down again and redone, because they’ve laid the outside bricks on mud, they haven’t put any foundations down.
“They laid bricks on pieces of wood, the inside is dangerous because they’ve left loose bricks everywhere, there’s loose bricks hanging above my head right now, they haven’t put the right timbers in.
“I’ve been quoted £22,000 by other builders to rectify everything because it all basically needs to be torn down and rebuilt.”
After confronting them with the issues, the building company claimed Mr Rohomon changed his ideas for the conversion.
Mr Rohomon denies this and argues he still just wants his garage to be converted in the way he set out at the start of the building work.
Since their disagreement, Mr Rohomon has been unable to make contact with G.T Joinery & Building Services Ltd and he says the company has gone “under the radar”.
Now, the homeowner has been left with a shell of a garage conversion that he says is unsafe to be in.
He says he has been forced to find enough money to pay another building company to rectify the situation.
“All the builders that have come since to give me other quotes have told me that they’re just chasing after builders that have done bad work, I don’t know whether it was through Covid or what, but they’re just popping up everywhere," Mr Rohomon continued.
Thomas Bradley from G.T Joinery & Building Services said: “GT Joinery and Building is now under liquidation.
“Tony asked for a specific job to be done but was not forthcoming with the correct reasons.
“It was meant to be a crafts room, TV room downstairs, not a living quarter, which required completely different planning completely, but because he is a fireman and a stand up guy he can't possibly be in the wrong and as there is no protection for builders nowadays.
“So with that being said, GT Joinery is being liquidated.”
Mr Rohomon claims that he was honest with the building company throughout the process, and has not changed his desires for his garage conversion since the work started.
