Kenicia Francis
A single mother of two broke down in tears while recounting her experience with a local contractor whom she hired to build her home.
Fiona Michael told Observer media that she wanted to build her house so that her mother, who had spent most of her life in a mental institution, could live out her last days surrounded by family.
However, her mother died before the house was completed due to multiple major issues that she said the contractor was responsible for.
“I went to be with my mom in December. My mother turned around in her wheelchair, propped herself up, I sat in her lap and she hugged me. I had no idea that was the last time my mother was going to hold me in her arms,” Michael told Observer.”
“I got a call [that] my mom died. The first thing that came to my mind was, ‘Mommy, I failed you’. I did not fulfill my promise that I was going to bring her into a home where she can be with her grandson, her granddaughter, her great-grandkids. She died alone in a facility. They said nothing happens before its time, but I pray to God each day because I lose sleep because of this. That contractor knew I was planning to move my mother in. I even said to him, ‘these stairs are going to be hard for her to climb. So later on, I’m going to have to try and find better accommodations in the house for her’,” she said.
Michael, who is the manager of an Airbnb, said she was too distracted with her 9 to 5 job to spot the red flags early.
One of the first major issues that occurred was the collapse of her water tank.
“I bought a tank and it only lasted me a couple hours. He dug like a sort of crevice, then he put it on pallet boards. Later in the evening when the water guy came to fill up the tank, it totally collapsed. This was a 1000-gallon water tank costing me $2,300. The contractor decided he’s not going to be taking any responsibility. In his opinion, the water guy shouldn’t fill it up so much.” she said.
The second major issue involved “a glitch in my plan where I only had one entrance, one exit to my house. The electrician brought that to our attention, not the contractor. So, he’s now giving me a change of order contract, where I have to find materials and labour money. I had already gone to the bank to get this loan; I couldn’t go back and ask them for another.” she explained.
The electrician who brought attention to the ‘glitch’ was personally hired by Michael. However, APUA stated that the electrician who the contractor initially had on his team, did not adequately set up the temporary light installation.
“I told him if your electrician couldn’t allow us to pass a standard textbook procedure, I do not trust him to wire my house. The electrician that brought all this information to me in front of the contractor was the person that I hired to wire my house.”
Micheal and her contractor also had a dispute over her roof.
She said the initial plan the contractor got detailed a galvanized roof; however, he convinced her a concrete roof was more beneficial.
“In his opinion, it was cheaper, less time consuming and appealing,” she said.
However, she added that the engineer who works for the bank later informed her that the structure of the house was not strong enough to support a concrete roof, and therefore the bank would not sanction it.
According to Michael, the contractor used this situation to claim he was going out of pocket to finish, as the galvanized roof was far more expensive than what was outlined in the estimate for one made of concrete. She said he asked to halt work until a cost variance was done.
The engineer stated the receipts he was provided with by the contractor showed more material was bought than needed for the size of her house, causing it to be more expensive.
She was also told not to interact with any of the workers and wasn’t able to see the inside of her house due to the contractor having the keys and she was unable to take time from work to meet him early enough to be given access.
“I felt it was his house. He was making all the decisions, all the demands. We reached a point where we had to stand still,” she said.
He also only came to her to request six more weeks to complete the house some 16 days after it should have been finished. The house was supposed to be finished on December 4 last year, but still wasn’t complete at the time of her mother’s death in February.
“The sad thing is that when you talk to people in Antigua, they go like, ‘oh, this is what normally happens. There’s nothing out there to protect you’.” she said.
“It’s painted, but not done properly. I’ve had to fix a closet that looked like it was butchered. I’ve had to build a whole new septic tank; I’ve had to dig a whole new soakaway. You can’t lean on my railings, or you’ll fall over because they’re not mounted properly. As a matter of fact, the railings themselves, the wood that was used, you see phone numbers on them. You see cement on them. They weren’t even sanded before they were put up as railings. In the roof, on my balcony, you can see patches of board just staring down at you,” she lamented.
The distraught homeowner said she was forced to move in with her eight-year-old son despite all of the damage and incomplete projects because she was now becoming unable to afford to rent a house.
Michael said she even began selling as many of her belongings as she could to reduce the cost she was being charged for storage.
“The plumbing and electrical were incomplete. Where was I going to shower, defecate, where was I going to cook? The contractor put the septic at the front of the building, he got whoever to do it. They formed it and they threw some cement in there. We had a two-inch pipe. Maybe a fairy’s stool can pass through a two-inch pipe. I was reduced, me and my son, to stooling in a bucket in garbage bags and throwing our feces in the bushes.”
Michael said she also caught the contractor stealing from the property on multiple occasions; however, whenever she reported the matter to the police, it turned into what she described as a ‘he said, she said’ situation.
He would claim that the materials belonged to him and she would insist everything on the property belonged to her.
Due to the back and forth, she added, the police instructed the contractor not to return to her property and for them to seek legal counsel as it’s a civil dispute.
He has apparently not adhered to the police, and because of her financial situation, Micheal decided to focus on completing her house independently, instead of pursuing legal action as it’s very expensive and time consuming.
In closing, she told Observer: “This contractor has already received the full amount of money except the retainer fee, which is given three months after the house is complete. So, pretty much out of pocket, I’m having to finish my home, completing my home at my cost while the contractor still has the money that I got from the bank.”
